Allegory of Charity - 17th century Emilian School

Oil on canvas painting measuring 73 x 93 cm without frame and 106 x 86 cm with a contemporary frame depicting the allegory of charity of the Emilian school of the late 17th century.

This type of painting is a great classic of 17th-century Emilian painting and is entirely and easily expressed by that somewhat easy and crude cursive style that immediately jumps out at the eye, but also by that feverish commitment in the ornamentation and minute descriptions of clothing and objects or by the physiognomic features of the protagonists.

The painting in question is an important document of the Emilian school as it moves towards the new century, because it displays a luministic impetus of brilliant skill as we can see both in the portraiture of the protagonists and in their gestures, achieving a peculiarity of manner that marks a significant phase in the development of the genre, with lucid anticipation of the executive finesse of the neoclassics, also due to a breadth of impasto and a perspicuity of definition that are all typical prerogatives of great Emilian painting.