About the Image:
According to an original inscription on the back, this drawing is an allegory of charity. It belongs to a cycle of drawings of female allegories, a particularly popular motif for the decoration of Venetian villa interiors. Usually incorporated in a moral-theological pictorial programme, they were intended as an appeal to virtuous conduct in the Christian sense. In view of this work’s manner of execution, however, it can hardly have served as a mere preliminary study. Rather, brush drawings of this kind were collected by the educated nobility as independent artworks and bound into books to serve as a basis for scholarly discussion.
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This image is in the public domain.
