# Allegory of Charity

- By: Francesco de Mura (Italian, 1696-1782)
- Date: c. 1743–44
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Classification: Painting
- Dimensions: 139.5 × 134.6 cm (54 15/16 × 53 in.); Framed: 159.4 × 159.4 cm (62 3/4 × 62 3/4 in.)
- Culture: Italy
- Credit line: Preston O. Morton Memorial Fund for Older Paintings
- Museum: [Art Institute of Chicago](https://www.artic.edu/artworks/36492)
- Rights: [Public domain (CC0)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://invisiblenetwork.ai/thumbs/web/573aa6b7159b4a6e8532bbb634a35049.jpg
- Who can see it: Adult profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

This painting presents an allegory of the virtue of charity through images of maternal love and sacrifice: a mother nurtures several young children and a pelican feeds her young by drawing blood from her own breast. This work was one of a set of allegories of five virtues intended as decorations set above doors in a palace belonging to the king of Savoy, a region in northwest Italy. Francesco de Mura spent most of his career in Naples but also worked for the king of Savoy in the 1740s, producing paintings in a style that combined grand, calm figures with active drapery. Although it is now rectangular, the canvas shows signs of an earlier curved shape appropriate to a Rococo room decoration.

Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0