Charity

Charity — Francesco de Mura. 1743/44.

Medium: Oil on canvas. Dimensions: 139.5 × 134.6 cm (54 15/16 × 53 in.); Framed: 159.4 × 159.4 cm (62 3/4 × 62 3/4 in.).

Collection record: Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago. Museum connection according to this source; current display unverified.

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, original record, CC BY 4.0. HTML formatting removed; wording retained. Other artwork metadata: CC0.

Source: official collection record. Metadata selected and normalized by Artline from the source export, accessed 10 September 2026; no museum endorsement. Reproduction rights are separate.