An allegory of Charity

Jean-Jacques Lagrenée was born in Paris in 1739 into a family of artists. He studied painting with his brother, Louis Jean-François, and was admitted into the Académie de France in Rome, where he remained a pensionnaire from 1763 to 1768. Lagrenée is best known for his history subjects, but he also painted decorative works such as Allegory of Winter for the Galerie d'Apollon in the Louvre (in situ). He became a member of the Académie Royale in 1775 and received commissions from important patrons such as the Comte d'Angiviller, Directeur-Général des Bâtiments for Louis XVI. Between 1785 and 1800 Lagrenée was the artistic director for the Manufacture de Sèvres, where he created many new Neoclassical designs, including the Etruscan service for Marie-Antoinette's dairy at the Château of Rambouillet. He continued painting until his death in 1821.

In this large painting, Lagrenée presents an allegory of the Theological Virtue of Charity, a subject he treated in various forms on several occasions. The imagery is drawn from the six works of mercy, as described in the Gospel of Matthew (25: 35-37): tending the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick and the prisoner. Lagrenée exhibited another version of this subject in the Salon of 1783 (no. 18). His composition is highly informed by Italian Renaissance and Baroque altarpieces, including Guido Reni’s numerous treatments of the theme, as well as Domenichino’s Communion of Saint Jerome in the Vatican Pinacoteca. It is most closely related to an engraving by Lagrenée himself, which he almost certainly executed in Rome (see M. Sandoz, Les Lagrenée: II. — Jean-Jacques Lagrenée (le jeune), 1739-1821, Paris, 1988, p. 301, no. 317C, fig. 9, pl. XII).