Roman Charity (Latin: Caritas Romana; Italian: Carità Romana) or Cimon and Pero is an ancient Greek and Roman exemplary story (exemplum) of filial piety (pietas) in which a woman secretly breastfeeds her father or mother, incarcerated and supposedly sentenced to death by starvation. Once caught, the loving devotion shown so moves the authorities that she is forgiven and the parent is typically freed. The father in the story is often named Cimon (Ancient Greek: Κίμων, Kímōn) and the daughter Pero, although other versions name the father Mycon (Μύκον, Mýkon). First attested in surviving Roman sources, it became a common theme in Early Modern period of Western European art, particularly the Baroque period.
History
The story is recorded in the Factorum ac Dictorum Memorabilium Libri IX ("Nine Books of Memorable Deeds and Sayings") by the ancient Roman historian Valerius Maximus and was presented as a great act of pietas (i.e., filial piety) and Roman honour. Additionally, wall paintings and terracotta statues from the first century excavated in Pompeii suggest that visual representations of Pero and Cimon were common, however it is difficult to say whether these existed in response to Maximus's anecdote or preceded – inspired – his story. Among Romans, the theme had mythological echoes in Juno's breastfeeding of the adult Hercules, an Etruscan myth. Maximus's anecdote of Pero and Cimon posits the following ekphrastic challenge:
Men's eyes are riveted in amazement when they see the painting of this act and renew the features of the long bygone incident in astonishment at the spectacle now before them, believing that in those silent outlines of limbs they see living and breathing bodies. This must needs happen to the mind also, admonished to remember things long past as though they were recent by painting, which is considerably more effective than literary memorials. The mid-1st century Natural History of Pliny the Elder includes the story in its section on the greatest examples of human affection known. In his version, a jailed plebeian woman was nursed by her daughter, who had just given birth and was searched for any food at each visit by the guard. Finally caught, the affection is so moving that the mother was freed and the family provided for out of public funds for the rest of their lives. In some versions, while the guard does hesitate and wonder if perhaps what he saw was against nature (an act of lesbianism), he concludes that in fact it is an example of the first law of nature, which is to love one's own parents.
Subject in art
Early depictions in Germany and Italy The motif appeared in both its mother-daughter and father-daughter variety, although the cross-gendered version was ultimately more popular. The earliest modern depictions of Pero and Cimon emerged independently of each other in Southern Germany and Northern Italy around 1525, in a wide range of media including bronze medals, frescoes, engravings, drawings, oil paintings, ceramics, inlaid wood decorations, and statues.
In Germany, the brothers Barthel Beham (1502–40) and Sebald Beham (1500–50) produced between them six different renderings of Pero and Cimon. Barthel's first rendering of the theme in 1525 is usually brought in connection with a brief jail term that he, his brother Sebald, and their common friend Georg Pencz served for charges of atheism earlier that year. Barthel's brother Sebald would reissue this print in reverse in 1544, this time with two inscriptions informing the viewer of the father's identity ("Czinmon") and of the meaning of this act: "I live off the breast of my daughter." Sebald himself would revisit the motif twice in his youth between 1526 and 1530, and again in 1540. The print from 1540 is almost ten times bigger than most of the Beham brothers' other art works (ca. 40 x 25 cm) and openly pornographic. Cimon's arms tied are behind his back and his shoulders and lower body are covered in a jacket-like piece of cloth, however his muscular chest and erect nipples are on full display. Pero stands between Cimon's knees, completely naked, her hair is undone and her pubic region and stomach are shaved. She offers him her left breast with a V-hold. An inscription made to look like a scratching into the wall reads: Whither does Piety not penetrate, what does she not devise? Later in the sixteenth century German artists began depicting the scene in oil paintings, often choosing the classicizing half-length format, thereby drawing of formal analogies between Pero and ancient heroines and including Pero within the genre of the "strong woman", similar to Lucretia, Dido, and Cleopatra or Judith, Salome, and Delilah. Examples of these works include Georg Pencz's version from 1538, Erhard Schwetzer's depiction from the same year, Pencz's version (housed in Stockholm) from 1546, and one by the so-called Master with the Griffin’s Head executed as well in 1546. Italian oil paintings of the motif existed as early as 1523, when a notary described a painting in possession of the recently deceased Pietro Luna, as "a large canvas in a gilded frame with a woman who nurses an old man". A similar painting is described by a notary for the house of Benedetti di Franciscis in 1538. Still another painting is listed, correctly identified as a daughter nursing her father, by a notary in the estate of miniaturist Gasparo Segizzi. Unfortunately, none of these paintings are still extant.
Influences from Caravaggio and Rubens
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