“Charity Moderated by Temperance” is represented as a scantily clad woman expressing milk from her breast, while a woman dressed in white pours water into a cup.
This representation is very close to the Baroque taste for oxymoron: in fact, charity is by definition a virtue that should have no limit and which here, instead, is restrained by the typically classical idea of moderation, expressed through the gesture of pouring water from one container to another, mixing the cold with the hot to obtain lukewarm water (hence the Latin term “temperantia”) and by the horses’ bits that the woman holds in her left hand.
Critics have proposed a further interpretation of this scene, replacing the figure of Charity with that of Nature which, receiving nourishment from Temperance, is able to be satisfied with little and therefore represents an explicit invitation not to exaggerate with pleasures, to moderate appetites. This modification stems from the study of the Latin inscription present in the painting, currently meaningless due to incorrect repainting, which critics believe could originally have been “NATVRA PAVCIS CONTENTA” (= Nature is content with few things), taken from the work of the philosopher Severino Boezio “De Consolatio Philosophiae”. This new reading hypothesis, however, still needs to be supported by new documentation.
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