This is the model for a marble relief donated in 1746 by Michael Rysbrack to the Foundling Hospital. Established in London by the captain Thomas Coram in 1739, the Foudnling Hospital provided refuge, cared for and educated children abandoned by parents experiencing extreme poverty or other terrible maladies. The painter William Hogarth and the composer George Frideric Handel played an important role in promoting the hopsital, encouraging artists such as Rysbrack to donate their works and making the hospital as a fashionable location in London. Rysbrack was one of a numberof artists with close connections with the charity and was elected a Governor and Guardian of the hospital in 1745. The subject of Rysbrack's relief is appropriate as it depicts an allegorical figure of Charity carrying a child.

The Foundling Hospital still exists and was renamed the Thomas Coram Foundation for Children in 1954.

John Michael Rysbrack (1694-1770) was born in Antwerp, and trained in the Netherlands, but spent his working life in Britain. He was one of the most important sculptors active in this country in the first half of the 18th century, and specialised in portrait busts and funerary monuments. Although he never visited Italy, many of his works are clearly indebted to classical archetypes. His terracotta models are particularly fine, and are often virtually finished pieces in their own right.