The Artist: Born in Bologna in 1628, Carlo Cignani trained with Francesco Albani (1578–1660), whose clarity of line and color he retained through most of his career. In the words of his early biographer Giampietro Zanotti (1674–1765), Cignani developed a “new manner,” however, one that pulled on the warmth and humanity of figures by Guido Reni (as in
1974.348) or, as Dezallier d’Argenville (1680–1765) would write, he “took from Reni and Caravaggio without forgetting the grace of Correggio.” After three years in Rome working primarily for the Farnese family, in 1665 Cignani returned to Bologna and opened a large studio that flourished in the 1670s; he then opened a drawing academy in Bologna in 1681. Between 1678 and 1680 Cignani headed a team that painted a large mythological cycle for the Farnese Palazzo del Giardino in Parma, where he would have become familiar with the
Assumption of the Virgin (1526–30) by Correggio (1489–1534) in Parma’s Duomo. This painting inspired Cignani’s own monumental frescoed ceiling, executed between 1686 and 1706, for the cupola of the Capella della Madonna del Fuoco, in the Cathedral of Santa Croce, Forlí. Cignani’s international fame was such that in 1692 he completed an over life-sized
Assumption of the Virgin (Alte Pinakothek, Munich) for Elector John William of Palatine originally intended to have been exchanged for a Rubens in the Jesuit church, Neuburg; his
Holy Kinship (1676), celebrating Bavarian governance ensuring Christianity, remains in the Theatinerkirche, Munich.
The Painting: Cignani’s pyramidal composition is classical and stable, but he brings a humanity to the subject—note the elegant folding of limbs and the gentle tilt of heads—that distances this painting from the formality of the allegorical figure of Charity found in Cesare Ripa’s
Iconologia (1593; illustrated ed. 1603). Cignani’s interpretation is in dialogue with two other paintings at The Met that humanize this subject, partially through their proximity to representations of the Virgin and Child: the Florentine painter Cesare Dandini’s
Charity (
69.283) and Guido Reni’s
Charity (
1974.348), both dated about 1630. Unlike Dandini or Reni, Cignani abandoned Ripa’s advice of red drapery signaling blood; Ripa’s iconography of the flaming crown, transposed to an oil lamp by Dandini, is omitted by both Reni and Cignani. Cignani’s horizontal format also moves his figures away from Ripa and conventional Virgin and Child imagery, though her being seated on the ground signals her characteristic humility. The horizontal format for Charity seated on the ground or ledge with rudiments of classical architecture had been developed by Jacques Blanchard (1600–1638), a French painter active in Italy between 1624 and 1629.
Judging by the many extant versions of
Charity by Cignani and his studio, this composition was very well received. In addition to what is generally considered the prime version, an oil on canvas in a private collection, Bologna, and autograph replicas in the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and in least three private collections, versions that were most likely executed by Cignani’s studio are found in the Royal Collection Trust (recorded as hanging in Queen Victoria’s State Bedchamber, Windsor Castle, in 1819), the Pinacoteca Communale, Ravenna, and the art market.[1]
The Met's painting, not included in the Beatrice Buscaroli Fabbri’s 1991 catalogue raisonné, is the only known example of this composition in oil on copper and is a reduction, executed at approximately half the scale of the canvas versions.
Beyond the many autograph and studio replicas of Cignani’s
Charity, the artist devised at least three closely related compositions, each of which is also known in multiple versions. His
Allegory of the Five Senses (see fig. 1 above) employs a very similar pyramidal form of a woman seated in a landscape, surrounded by five children each representing a different sense.[2] This composition has also been known as an
Allegory of Charity and when engraved by Samuele Jesi in 1818 was given the title “L’Amore Materno.” An alternate
Charity composition by Cignani again center arounds a seated woman in a landscape, but while she holds two children she reaches with her proper right arm to gently lift drapery over a child in a cradle, neatly wrapped in swaddling clothes.[3]
David Pullins 2020
[1] Beatrice Buscaroli Fabbri,
Carlo Cignani: Affreschi, dipinti, disegni, Bologna, 1991, p. 151. Also Sotheby’s, London, January 25, 1961, no. 48; Bukowski Auctions, Stockholm, November 24–30, 2015, no. 1098. For the Royal Collections version see William Henry Pyne,
The History of the Royal Residences (1816–1819), vol. 1, pl. 11.
[2] In addition to private collections and the art market, versions are found in Pallavicini Collection, Rome; Galleria Sabauda, Turin; Sansouci Palace-Stiftung Preußische Schlösser, Potsdam; and Art Gallery of New South Wales. See Fabbri 1991, pp. 145–47.
[3] In addition to private collections and the art market, versions are found in the Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona; Collezione della Cassa dei Risparmi, Forlì; Galleria Nazionale, Parma; Chatsworth House, Devonshire; and Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. See Fabbri 1991, pp. 148–50.
