Christian Charity

Christian Charity painted by Bernardo Strozzi in 1625 and held by the Musei di Strada Nuova in Genoa represents the Genoese phase of Strozzi's career before his move to Venice in 1630. Strozzi — known as 'il Prete Genovese' (the Genoese Priest) after his entry into the Capuchin order — combined the intense chiaroscuro he absorbed from visiting Flemish and Lombard painters with a Genoese colourist tradition to create a distinctive Baroque style. Charity, the greatest of the theological virtues in Pauline theology, was conventionally represented as a maternal figure nursing or tending to multiple children — a female figure of self-giving abundance. Strozzi's version would have brought his characteristic warm flesh tones, direct characterisation, and broad brushwork to this devotional-allegorical subject.

Canvas with the warm, painterly technique Strozzi developed through engagement with Rubens's Genoese visit (1607-08) and Caravaggio's influence via Orazio Gentileschi. Impasto highlights on flesh and fabric contrast with thin, transparent shadows. The composition clusters figures around a luminous centre, drawing the eye inward through a range of emotional and physical types.