Charity 1625 - 1635

Curator: Cesare Dandini painted "Charity" sometime between 1625 and 1635. It's currently part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection. Editor: My immediate impression is one of soft opulence. The rosy flesh tones against the rich blue and red fabrics feel both comforting and, I don’t know, materially generous. Curator: Absolutely. Dandini, working within the Florentine Baroque style, uses the traditional iconography of Charity – a woman nursing children – to evoke themes of compassion and abundance, particularly in response to the social inequities of the era. This composition makes a direct link between the ideals of feminine virtue and social responsibility. Editor: And note the use of oil paint, applied so smoothly as to nearly conceal its own materiality. It speaks to a sophisticated understanding of the medium, aimed at depicting not just forms, but a kind of idealized smoothness associated with wealth and privilege. Look at that ceramic vessel near the base with the flickering flames. Curator: I see what you mean about idealized smoothness, yet it's worth remembering that artistic production itself had a material reality. The sourcing of pigments, the labour in the studio – these all connect "Charity" to broader networks of commerce and craft within 17th-century Italy. Dandini worked within the Medici court. We can consider how gender dynamics operated in artistic workshops through pieces like this. Editor: Precisely! This wasn't created in a vacuum. Who were the assistants preparing the paints? Where did Dandini source his lapis lazuli for that intense blue? Those details, though often invisible in art historical narratives, were critical. Curator: And even that seeming "timelessness" is, itself, a construct. The Baroque aesthetic—which this exemplifies so well—is often leveraged to enforce the idea of these being the proper or acceptable characteristics or virtues. Editor: It’s a constructed virtue, visualized through highly skilled craftmanship. Thinking about these artistic choices allows us to reframe this vision of "Charity" through a materialist lens, recognizing the labor, resources, and social contexts that shaped its creation and reception. Curator: Reflecting on this, "Charity" offers not just a pretty picture of an abstract concept but a tangible artifact that reflects and shapes the complex, and at times fraught, interplay of material, labour and identity within early modern Europe. Editor: A lens which brings awareness that we're constantly interacting with artifice—constructed and reified realities. Thanks to pieces like "Charity", we have endless routes to examine them more honestly and comprehensively.