1634
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
The Three Theological Virtures: Faith, Hope, and Charity, Surrounded by the Four Evangelists is a 1634 by Pieter I de Jode, a Renaissance work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see three women standing on clouds, each holding a symbol—Faith has a cross, Hope an anchor, Charity a heart. Around them, four men with books and animals represent the Gospel writers. This isn’t just a drawing—it’s a blueprint. De Jode made it as a design for a Bible’s title page, where the empty space below Charity would later hold text. The figures are strong and clear, meant to be carved into print. If you like how he builds scenes with bold lines, look up *chiaroscuro*—a way of using light and shadow to make figures pop.
This drawing is a design for a frontispiece, or title page, for the 1639 edition of the Theatrum Biblicum , a pictorial Bible compiled from print series by various artists illustrating the Old and New Testaments. Pieter De Jode the Elder’s monumental figural types depict the three theological virtues: Charity, atop a blank plinth, Hope, on the right, and Faith, on the left, bordered by the four Apostles with their attributes. The plinth was kept blank in order to be filled in with the title of the book (in this case, the New Testament), in the printed version. De Jode spent his career making…
In the period, the virtue of Charity, also described as Love, seen here seated atop the plinth, was usually portrayed as a woman tending to three children.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Petrus, or Pieter de Jode I or Pieter de Jode the Elder (1570 – 9 August 1634), was a Flemish printmaker, draughtsman, publisher and painter principally active in Antwerp.
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