Practical reuse
Use this artwork.
Verified CC0 This record carries an explicit open-use marker in the source metadata. Download the publication copy or follow the museum record for its master image.
- Rights signal
- CC0
- Publication file
- 586 × 893 px · WebP
- Suggested credit
- Charity (c. 1550–1600). Gift of Baroness R. de Kerchove Rights: CC0. https://clevelandart.org/art/1951.541
Vault de Lupin makes the source signal legible; it does not provide legal advice or replace the institution’s current rights statement.
From the museum record
When this alabaster group entered the museum's collection, it was thought to depict the Virgin Mary, Christ, and Saint John the Baptist. It has been identified, however, as a personification of Charity, the most elevated of the three Christian theological virtues. The two other theological virtues are Faith and Hope. Within Christian belief, Charity is also known as a supernatural virtue, where the object of human conduct is the ultimate unification with God through love. Alluding to its eminent position, Charity sits enthroned, with powerful hybrid beasts supporting her chair. The diminutive footstool propping up her left foot may refer to the necessity of humility in one's relationship to God. Also, a child raises a vessel filled with fruits to another suggesting that selflessness and love are attributes of charitable actions.
Lupin’s visual index
A marble sculpture depicts the Virgin Mary cradling the infant Jesus and Saint John the Baptist in a tender embrace.
Machine-assisted description · useful for discovery, not scholarship.