The oval, which the National Gallery purchased at auction in Milan together with its pendant Caritas romana (Cimon and Pero) (NGS 3531), originates from Haasberg, a baroque country house in Planina near Rakek, which was destroyed by fire during the Second World War. The house changed hands several times over the course of its long history and its noble owners included the Eggenberg, Cobenzl, Coronini and Windisch-Graetz families. The last of these withdrew to Trieste during the Second World War and sold several paintings from the house to local antiques dealers.

Christian Love is the work of the Venetian painter Francesco Pittoni, who also worked for a time for clients in the county of Gorizia and, judging from the large number of paintings that once adorned the house in Planina, probably for clients in Carniola too. For the time being, however, extant sources do not permit us to identify with certainty the original owner of this painting or who commissioned it. Given their dating, the two works could have come to Haasberg at the time of the Eggenbergs, or with one of the subsequent owners. 

Love (Caritas) is one of the three theological virtues, the other two being Faith (Fides) and Hope (Spes). Together with the four cardinal virtues of Prudence (Prudentia), Justice (Iustitia), Fortitude (Fortitudo) and Temperance (Temperantia), they represent the principal virtues of the human soul and are a popular subject in art.

In his Iconologia (1593), a handbook of personifications and allegories that was popular with artists, Cesare Ripa described Love (Caritas) as the image of a woman dressed in
red with a crown of flames on her head. Her left arm holds a child to her breast. Two other children stand at her feet. The flames indicate that Love is never passive but always active. The three children represent the triple power of Love, since without Love, neither Faith nor Hope mean anything.

Artists followed handbooks of this kind to varying degrees in their depictions of personifications and allegories. Pittoni depicted Christian Love wrapped in a piece of red drapery in the act of
nursing a child who is looking towards the viewer. A second child is pulling at a piece of drapery, while a third holds a bunch of grapes and a bussolà, a typical Venetian sweet pastry in the shape of a ring. This last item is an allusion to the abundance that love brings.