Pensionante del Saraceni

Thought to have been acquired in France before 1967.

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. Although the restoration is still very effective and should remain as is, this painting apparently has not been restored for many years. The canvas is lined. There is no abrasion to the paint layer, which certainly provides a very sharp and lively image. There are isolated losses that have been restored, the largest of which is beneath the basket in the lower center. There is a group of losses in the basket itself. There are restorations in and around the head of the crayfish pinching the figure. There are also restorations in and above the figure's mouth. These restorations, and a few others, are isolated and well executed. The condition is very good.
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This painting, which has never been published or discussed in the Caravaggesque literature, is arguably the most accomplished of all the known versions of the fascinating composition. The 'best' of the other versions has been generally considered to be that in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Strasbourg (fig. 1), whose composition follows this one exactly (though the Strasbourg canvas is slightly more cropped at top, bottom and sides).¹  The Strasbourg picture was at one time attributed to Mattia Preti and has been variously published as a work by a wide range of painters: Serodine (Mayer, 1945); a follower of Caravaggio (Posner, 1971); a French artist close to Pensionante del Saraceni (Cuzin-Rosenberg, 1978); an anonymous Caravaggesque master (Nicolson, 1979); a Neapolitan artist in the 1620s (Salerno, 1984); and is currently catalogued by the museum as 'Roman School, first half of the 17th century, after a lost original by Caravaggio'.²  Another variant, published by Marini as a work by Tommaso Salini, was on the art market in Rome in 1955 and later in a private collection, Milan.³  That painting omits one of the crayfish lower left and, like the version in Strasbourg, shows a more compact composition. A third damaged copy, given by Nicolson to either an Italian or Netherlandish artist, is in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon.⁴  Two further versions are listed in the Strasbourg museum catalogue: one, of similar dimensions to the present work (103 by 78 cm.), in the Salmi collection, Rome; and another, on panel, mentioned in the Catalogue de la collection J. Audéoud in Geneva in 1847.⁵  The existence of numerous variants attests to the fame and popularity of this particular composition among Caravaggio's contemporaries.

Although thematically linked to other genre paintings executed by Caravaggio in his youth, Marini did not believe this composition to derive directly from a Caravaggio prototype. Cuzin and Rosenberg, when discussing the version in Strasbourg, suggested however that there was a lost original by Caravaggio upon which the variants were based. A painting of similar subject is mentioned by Jacomo Manilli in his 1650 guide to Villa Borghese, as hanging in the Stanza di Dafne - "Il quadretto d'un putto morso da un granchio, è del Caravaggio" - however no such picture ascribed to Caravaggio is listed in the 17th-century Borghese inventories, and the boy here is clearly being bitten by a crayfish, not a crab.⁶  The painting is evidently related in subject to other genre paintings of this type, namely Caravaggio's A boy bitten by a lizard (National Gallery, London [fig. 2]) and works painted in the artist's circle; such as A boy bitten by a mouse formerly in a Roman private collection⁷ or A boy frightening a girl with a crab formerly in the collection of Joseph Kaplan, Chicago.⁸  The latter was ascribed by Nicolson to an artist close in style to 'Master K', otherwise known as the 'Master of the open-mouthed Boys', whom he believed originated from eastern France and may have had contact with Carlo Saraceni. The fact that Cuzin and Rosenberg considered the Strasbourg picture to be by an artist close to 'Pensionante del Saraceni' does point to the probability that the present variant may also be by a Caravaggesque master of French origin, and most likely by Pensionante del Saraceni himself.

For reasons as yet unknown to us, Saraceni was closely associated with a number of French painters in Rome during the second decade of the 17th century. The contemporary biographer Giovanni Baglione wrote of Carlo Saraceni's obsession with France and the French, describing him in disparaging terms as always wanting to dress like a Frenchman, despite never having been to France nor speaking a single word of French.⁹  Among the artists working in Saraceni's circle is a figure to whom a number of paintings have been attributed, whose name 'Pensionante del Saraceni' (literally 'boarder' or 'lodger' of Saraceni) was coined by Roberto Longhi in 1943. Saraceni is known to have provided accommodation for several artists and thus 'Pensionante' has variously been identified as Guy François (c.1578-1650), Jean Leclerc (1587/8-1633) and the Liégois François Walschartz (1597/8-1678/9), all of whom are recorded as having worked closely with Saraceni in the 1610s.¹⁰  Just as Bartolomeo Manfredi had a French following in the form of Valentin, Tournier and Régnier, so too Saraceni had a group of independently successful French painters in his own circle. Their paintings, like Saraceni's, represented a different approach to 'Caravaggism': their typically peaceful narratives, - so different from Caravaggio's 'violent' works - are imbued with a radiant light and rich sense of color.

Surprising though it is that Pensionante del Saraceni's true identity has yet to be found, a corpus of paintings has been gradually brought together under his name and this painting does appear to adhere to many of this group's characteristics.¹¹  In particular, the tonal range and colour palette of this canvas, so much softer and cooler in tone than those in the Strasbourg variant (which is much more 'Caravaggesque' in the traditional sense), point to a convincing attribution to Pensionante.

1. Inv. 1285, 96 by 73 cm.; see B. Nicolson, Caravaggism in Europe, Oxford 1979, vol. I, p. 89, reproduced vol. II, fig. 4.
2. It was attributed to Preti when in the De Pourtalès collection, prior to its bequest to the museum. For publications see A.L. Mayer, "New Documents and Attributions from the Strasbourg Museum to the Venice Palazzo Ducale", in Gazette des Beaux-Arts, vol. XXVII, series 6, 1945, pp. 91-92, reproduced fig. 11 (as Serodine); D. Posner, "Caravaggio's Homo-Erotic Early Works", in The Art Quarterly, 1971, pp. 317 and 324, footnote 65, reproduced fig. 10 (as Follower of Caravaggio); J.-P. Cuzin & P. Rosenberg, "Saraceni et la France", in La Revue du Louvre, vol. 3, 1978, p. 195, reproduced fig. 24 (as a French artist working close to Pensionante del Saraceni); Nicolson, op. cit.; L. Salerno, 1984, p. 105, fig. 5 (cited in Musées de France, Répertoire des peintures italiennes du XVIIe siècle, Paris 1988, p. 75); and Peintures italiennes du Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg, 1996, p. 107, cat. no. 66.
3. 97 by 73.5 cm.; see M. Marini, Caravaggio, Rome 1987, p. 342, cat. no. P-22, reproduced (as Tommaso Salini).
4. 111 by 76 cm., oil on panel transferred to canvas in 1980; exhibited in the Salon des Arts, Lyon, 1786, no. 10 (as Caravaggio); published in Nicolson, op. cit., p. 89, and reproduced in Gazette des Beaux-Arts, December 1975, p. 201, fig. 3. See also Catalogue peintures Musée des Beaux-Arts Lyon, Ecoles étrangères, 1993, p. 196. The composition is more extensive than the Strasbourg version at the top, as is the present work.
5. Written communication to the museum from M. Natale in 1979.
6. Translates: "The painting of a putto bitten by a crab, is by Carravaggio"; J. Manilli, Villa Borghese fuori di Porta Pinciana, Rome 1650, p. 71.
7. V. Mameli collection, Rome, in 1954, and later sold, London, Christie's, 10 April 1987, lot 65 (as Manfredi). See. A. Moir, Caravaggio and His Copyists, New York 1976, reproduced fig. 6 (as 'anonymous').
8. Moir, op. cit., reproduced fig. 5 (as 'anonymous'). Moir noted a likeness of these genre pictures to a painting of A boy eating pulse in the National Museum, Warsaw, which is signed in Italian by the Dutch painter Jan van der Meer (ibid., p. 136, note 229 i-ii; 72 by 93.5 cm., inv. no. 770.) but this does not appear to be a very compelling argument.
9. G. Baglione, Le Vite de' pittori, scultori et architetti, Rome 1642, p. 147: "Costui... voleva andar sempre vestito alla Francese, benche egli non fusse mai stato in Francia, nè sapesse dire una parola di quel linguaggio".
10. Guy François was in Rome by 1608 and left in 1613, two years before his earliest dated work. Jean Leclerc is first recorded with Saraceni in 1617, when he was already 30 years old and therefore a mature, independent artist, For Le Clerc see C. Pétry, "Jean Le Clerc", in L'Art en Lorraine au temps de Jacques Callot, exhibition catalogue, Nancy, Musée des Beaux-Arts, 13 June - 14 September 1992, pp. 218-38. Though unfamiliar to us today, Walschartz was described as being in Rome "où il se mit sous la leçon de Carlo Vénitien, peintre fameux, qu'il a voulu en quelque manière imiter, mêlée cependant d'un goût flamand qu'il a retenu toute sa vie"; Abry, Les Hommes illustres de la nation liégois, 1712, ed. Liège 1867, p. 208 (cited by A. Ottani Cavina, "Les peintres de la réalité et le cercle caravesque de Rome", in L'Art en Lorraine...(op. cit.), p. 61).
11. Among works unanimously accepted as by Pensionante del Saraceni see the Chicken vendor in the Museo del Prado, Madrid; the Fruit vendor in the Detroit Institute of Arts; and Job mocked by his wife (or The Denial of St. Peter) in the Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome; for which see B. Nicolson, Caravaggism in Europe, ed. Turin 1990, vol. I, p. 155, reproduced vol. II, figs. 793-95.