GIACOMO CERUTI, CALLED PITOCCHETTO | A GIRL WITH A COW AND A SHEEP IN A ROCKY LANDSCAPE

Suida-Manning Collection, New York;

By descent to Robert L. Manning, New York;

Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 24 May 1991, lot 67;

There acquired.

R.L. Manning, Painting in Italy in the 18th c.: Rococo to Romanticism, exhibition catalogue, Chicago 1970, p. 26;

M. Gregori, Giacomo Ceruti, Milan 1982, p. 473, cat. no. 251, reproduced in color p. 407 and color details pp. 408-09;

F. Frangi, Giacomo Ceruti, il Pitocchetto, exhibition catalogue, Brescia 1987, p. 194, under cat. no. 84;

E. Strocchi, Settecento Lombardo, exhibition catalogue, Milan 1991, p. 142;

Although well known for his portraits, still-life and religious paintings, Ceruti is most celebrated as a painter of genre and low-life scenes, depicting his humble subjects with striking naturalism and unusual dignity. Here the artist depicts a girl holding a distaff and resting outdoors while tending a cow and sheep. The painting has been dated by Dr. Mina Gregori and later Francesco Frangi and Elisabetta Strocchi (see Literature) to the 1760s. It belongs to a group of pastoral works which the artist completed towards the end of his career and which were influenced by a series of prints by Cornelis Bloemaert after Abraham Bloemaert. The present painting relates specifically to the eighth print in the series, in a which a girl also holds a distaff.

A proposed pendant to present composition, depicting a mother and child milking a cow in a landscape, was sold at Sotheby's New York, 30 January 2019, lot 58 (fig. 1, $300,000). Other works from the series include A spinner and farmer with a basket in the Museo d'arte antica del Castello Sforzesco, Milan, and A shepherdess formerly with Colnaghi, London.¹ Like the present painting, the figures in these scenes also look directly at the viewer as if in conversation.

1. See M. Gregori 1982, pp. 473-4, cat. nos. 252 and 253, reproduced in color pp. 410-413.