Roman Follower of Caravaggio, circa 1620

Private collection, Florence, by 2017;

Thereafter acquired.

F. Scaletti, Caravaggio, Catalogo ragionato delle opere autografe, attribuite e controverse, Naples 2017, vol. II, p. 65, reproduced in black and white fig. 66 (as caravaggesque artist; incorrectly identified as the Mameli version).

This work, probably executed circa 1620, draws inspiration from Caravaggio's Boy Bitten by a Lizard at the National Gallery, London (inv. no. NG6504). The popularity of Caravaggio's early Roman paintings led to a proliferation of copies and adaptations. Among the diverse interpretations of this subject type is Boy Bitten by a Crayfish at the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Strasbourg (inv. no. 1285), a work that has been variously attributed to a range of seventeenth-century painters and is today associated with Pensionate del Saraceni.

The young boy, eyes wide with shock and mouth agape, screams in agony as a mouse bites his index finger. The work might be read as an allegory for pain: the boy who had previously been torturing the mouse is subsequently bitten, thereby having to endure the same type of pain that he has just been inflicting.

In addition to the present painting, two other versions of this composition are known: one in the Borromeo collection, Isola Bella, and another formerly in the Mameli collection, Rome, and sold (as Roman School, early 17th century) at auction (Vienna, Dorotheum, 10 November 2020, lot 86).