Charity

Carlo Cignani was the last great painter of the Bolognese school, whose long career bridged the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This Charity on copper, painted around 1680, depicts the theological virtue personified as a woman with children — a subject that allowed the display of the soft, sensual flesh painting for which Cignani was celebrated. He was deeply influenced by Correggio and the Carracci tradition.

The oil on copper achieves luminous, enamel-like quality through the reflective metallic support. Cignani's characteristically soft, warm flesh tones and gentle sfumato modeling demonstrate the Bolognese school's debt to Correggio's sensuous naturalism.