The allegory of the Five Senses turns out to be one of the favorite themes of Carlo Cignani, the most famous pupil of Francesco Albani and the greatest representative of the classicist current that runs through the Bolognese artistic story of the 2nd half of the century. XVII.

Surrounded by the esteem of the intellectuals of his time, who considered him the only true heir of Correggio, he was the head of a thriving shop first in Bologna and then in Forlì where he moved permanently in 1685.

The work is a workshop replica of the prototype made by Carlo Cignani for Cardinal Lazzaro Pallavicini at the end of the century. XVII.

In the version represented here, Charity is depicted as a mother surrounded by her 5 children, each called to impersonate the allegory of hearing, sight, smell, touch and taste with perceptive immediacy due to the presence of a few, significant narrative elements: the bell, the bouquet of flowers, the infant at the mother's breast, a mirror, a caress.