Standing Woman with Three Children (Caritas)

Author: Klazina Botke

This drawing, set down in black chalk and worked up with pen and brush, is of a woman lovingly protecting three children. With her head turned to the right, she looks at the child she carries on her shoulder while affectionately resting her left hand on the other little boy’s head. The third child sits on the ground, partially hidden behind the flowing skirt of the woman’s elaborate gown. She is the personification of Charity (Love), one of the three theological virtues St Paul describes in the Bible: ‘So faith, hope, charity abide, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.’^[1] With prudence, justice, temperance and fortitude, they are the seven virtues the Roman Catholic Church decrees for a good life. The three children symbolize dependence and unconditional love.^[2]

The drawing is a free interpretation of a fresco by Andrea del Sarto (1486-1530) in the Chiostro dello Scalzo in Florence (1508-26). Alongside scenes from the life of John the Baptist, he painted the personification of four virtues, among them Charity (fig.). This image, made entirely in shades of grey (a grisaille), gives the illusion of a sculpture: the woman with her children looks like a statue standing in a niche. Del Sarto’s composition was followed and adopted by, among others, the Dutch painter Jan van Hemessen and the workshop of Paolo Veronese (1528-1588).^[3] All the elements of the composition – the child hidden under the robe and the positions of the mother and the other two children – were changed to varying degrees in the Rotterdam study.