Cranch's paintings of mythological scenes which nearly always feature at least one slim female figure, naked but for a transparent drape or a large hat, produced early in his career, show Italian influences including that of Jacopo de' Barberi, who was at the court of Saxony for a period up to 1505.

[2] A young mother — identified as Charity, the personification of benevolence — with her naked body covered only by a transparent gauze, breastfeeds a child.

Cranach was also an innovator in that his Charity allegories were more or less nude figures, since the transparent veil offered nothing more than a symbolic fig leaf, at the same time helping to increase the visual pleasure.

[4] By representing the naked Caritas, or Charity, surrounded by three children, the protestant Cranach suffused his subject and the painting with a quality of motherly love.

Cranach's nudes, part of his series featuring the same female sitter, are easily recognizable, and he glorified them many times by making them appear in mythological and biblical scenes.