La Carità

By 1540 Lucas Cranach was the richest and busiest painter in Saxony, court artist to the Electors, a town councillor in Wittenberg, and a close friend of Martin Luther, whose portrait he turned out by the dozen. Around 1529 he had taken the figure of Charity, one of the old Christian virtues, and lifted her out of the usual line-up of virtues and vices to stand on her own: a calm nude mother in a thin veil, nursing one child while another clings to her neck. It sold. His workshop repeated the composition about a dozen times, and this small panel is one of them.