652. CHARITY.
Francesco Salviati (Florentine: 1510-1563).
Francesco Rossi, called "de' Salviati" from his patron, the Cardinal of that name, studied under Andrea del Sarto, and was an imitator of Michael Angelo. He was a great friend of Vasari, whose life of Salviati gives a most interesting account of their intimacy, especially of their early student days, when they "met together and went on festival days or at other times to copy a design from the best works wherever these were to be found dispersed about the city of Florence." In 1548 Salviati settled in Rome, where he was much employed.
The usual pictorial representation of Charity, as a woman surrounded by children and giving suck, is the same as Spenser's description of "Charissa"—
She was a woman in her freshest age,
Of wondrous beauty, and of bounty rare....
Her necke and brests were ever open bare,
That aye thereof her babes might sucke their fill....
A multitude of babes about her hong,
Playing their sportes, that joy'd her to behold;
Whom still she fed whiles they were weake and young,
But thrust them forth still as they wexed old.
The Faërie Queene, i. 10. xxx. xxxi.