Errand Boy Seated on a Basket
Technical Details
-
Title
Errand Boy Seated on a Basket -
Author
Pitocchetto (Giacomo Ceruti) -
Year
c. 1735 -
Dimensions
cm 130 × 95,5 -
Inventory
5649 -
Room
XXXVI
The painting, donated to Brera in 1966 by Giovanni Testori, art historian and expert on Lombard painting, but also a painter, journalist, writer and dramatist who left his mark on the Milanese culture of the last decades of the 20th century, constitutes the companion picture of the Porter Seated with a Basket, Eggs and Poultry. Like its pendant, it was painted around 1735. The artist imparts the dignity of portraiture to a crowd of poor vagrants, outcasts and peasants depicted as they struggle to get through the day. With his realistic portrayal, lyrical and full of human sympathy yet without ever lapsing into the picturesque, his sober compositions, his probing light and his bare settings, Ceruti can be counted one of the leading lights in European art of the 18th century, thanks also to the paintings now in the Brera.
