La Charité

This small panel of Charity, a woman surrounded by children with a basin of coins beside her, was the base of a larger altarpiece Raphael painted in 1507. The commission came from grief. Atalanta Baglioni of Perugia had lost her son Grifonetto, killed in a night of family murders that tore through the ruling Baglioni clan, and she ordered the altarpiece in his memory. Its main scene showed the dead Christ carried to the tomb, a mother's mourning turned into sacred form. Raphael was only 24. Napoleon's troops later removed the predella panels and took them to Paris, and they returned to the Vatican after his fall.