A new kind of image emerged in seventeenth-century Europe: portraits of common members of society, including the disenfranchised and those with disabilities, depicted with a sobriety and grandeur previously reserved for the elite. This rare full-length portrait, probably made in northern Italy in the 1680s, fits into this genre’s early development in a trajectory that runs—in the broadest, most illustrious strokes—from Jusepe de Ribera’s so-called
Clubfooted Boy (1642; Musée du Louvre, Paris) and Annibale Carracci’s
Cries of Bologna (1646; see
45.17) to Diego Velázquez’s
Sebastián Morra (ca. 1644; Museo del Prado, Madrid) and Edouard Manet’s series of “Philosophers," including his landmark
Absinthe Drinker (ca. 1859; Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen) and
Ragpicker (1865–71; Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena). American photographer Irving Penn would return to the genre’s small, reproducible print format to document America’s shifting postwar economy in the 1950s with his series
Small Trades (see, among others,
2014.268.31).
Measuring approximately 5.5 feet high and delivering a deadpan address, this imposing yet sensitive portrait claims a pioneering place in this important thread of European culture. Although not attributable to an artist as revered as Ribera or Velázquez, it encapsulates many of these canonical artists’ methods for speaking in this new idiom. Since it entered robust scholarly discussion in the 1990s, the painting’s attribution and date have been debated, but most experts conclude that it was made in Lombardy in the last quarter of the seventeenth century, perhaps with Spanish influence or even by a Spanish artist working abroad.[1] Recently, the same hand has been identified in
A Woman Buying a Broach from an Itinerant Salesman (1680s; Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence), which was in the Medici family collections by 1690.[2] A document dated August 4, 1689 indicates that the Medici painting was sold for a sizable sum of 40 lire by Niccolò Magliani, a painter and probable picture dealer, and that its figures were based on known individuals, including those in the circle of Giuseppe Mangiacani, a dealer, restorer, and sometime color merchant associated with the court.[3] In the exhibition
Miseria & Nobiltà: Giacomo Ceruti nell’Europa del Settecento (2023), scholars dubbed the hand of these two paintings the “Maestro dell’Ambulante Canesso” (Master of the Canesso Peddler) after the present canvas. They are comparable in terms of handling of paint, treatment of figures, the outdoor settings with a smooth-faced rusticated stone, and their large scale. The Met’s
Peddler is exceptional—and, arguably, additionally powerful—for the artist’s decision to depict a single figure head-on, thereby avoiding an anecdotal or genrelike subject. The viewer is a key actor in the image rather than the passive observer of a scene set solely in a pictorial space.
Relative to the masonry, the man’s proportions may suggest dwarfism, while his oversized shoes and inturned ankles and staff indicate imbalance and possible physical disability.[4] None of these conditions is stated outright, however, resulting in a highly sophisticated and empathetic image. Shoes were an especially costly item that was frequently bought secondhand and rarely fit exactly. Costume historian Jonquil O’Reilly has observed, moreover, that the rest of his clothing attests to his physical and economic condition in ways that are not immediately obvious today. Ankle-length pants were not worn in seventeenth-century Europe, and the way that the fabric seen here folds under along the bottom edge indicates that what he wears are actually knee-length breeches that have been recycled. The brown patches are repairs to the place of heaviest wear, on the front, at the knees. Rather than afford his own clothing, this man has recycled or been given those worn previously by someone with much longer legs. His economic state is further alluded to by the long line of closely spaced buttonholes, matched on the left by dangling threads: even cloth-covered buttons would have been sold at a certain stage in the process whereby newly made clothes eventually entered the rag market. That such details are included with such finely tuned attention further suggests that the artist painted an individual rather than imagined a type.[5]
Broadly, the artist’s approach seems to be anticipated by the Carraccis’ curious exploration of the human body in the first years of the seventeenth century. Portraits of those with physical and mental disabilities who were part of early modern court culture—notably in Spain, but also in Italy—have been suggested as comparatives. A key distinction of this work, however, is that the man remains outside the arena of social spectacle typically associated with such figures. He is not dressed up as a buffoon or made to perform in relationship to his physical condition.[6] He engages us directly with a deadpan gaze that implores us to make a purchase—but, more profoundly, may also ask us to reflect on our relative social positions.
Street peddlers or criers were ubiquitous in Renaissance and early modern urban culture. Because selling goods supposedly attested to an honest desire to offer a service to society rather than simply asking for money outright, peddling was viewed by the Catholic church as especially suitable to those with physical disability in need of financial support. Society thus distinguished such sellers from the "duplicitous" or "dishonest beggar."[7] This man offers small, unbound pamphlets, which have been identified as
Gallo di Mona Fiore, a satirical song dating from the Middle Ages, and
Pirramo e Tisbe, the tragic love story originating in Ovid and popularized in Shakespeare’s
A Midsummer Night’s Dream. These have been closely copied from real objects. The name of Giovanni Antonio Remondini, who published in Bassano del Grappa and Venice between 1650 and 1700, can be identified from a cover sheet of the second work. Remondini’s pamphlets, which were typically sold unbound, are known to have circulated through Italy in the hands of street peddlers precisely such as this man.[8] In addition to the ten pamphlets held in the man’s hand, the meticulously depicted basket evidently contains others for sale, protected from the elements by a leather cover. For the composition and pose, the artist probably turned to Annibale Carracci’s influential
Cries of Bologna; although the series does not include a seller of pamphlets, a bookseller carrying his goods in a large wicker basket is represented, and similar poses and concept can be found among the sellers of fans and even of cheese.[9] Archivally, peddlers selling unbound works from wicker baskets (known as
cestariol or
sportellaro) appear in Italian archives beginning in the 1630s, but presumably the practice and social type predates these first documented individuals. For early modern viewers, these sellers would also have evoked auditory, performative associations, for they often read or sang the stories, poems, and songs on offer.[10] Based on the social reality of such figures and the named individuals documented in the painting by the same hand in the Medici collection, The Met painting is very likely a portrait.
Still-life painting was a particular strength of this highly observant artist, as is readily apparent in the beautifully depicted shoes and the meticulously copied prints. The large hat helps to frame and give attention to the face, while at a practical level probably protected him from the sun. The sharply foreshortened pamphlets make for an especially engaging visual conceit at the center of the painting, drawing us precisely to what the man hopes to sell. At upper left, a piece of paper affixed to the stone wall with red wax probably announces a public event (a mass, auction, performance, or fair), further evoking and enlivening contemporary street culture. Similar notices appear prominently in biblical subjects by Mattia Preti and Luca Giordano.[11] The artist may never have intended for this text to be fully legible (this is certainly the case for comparable representations by his contemporaries), but a partial phrase (“Chi. . . .” or “Who. . . .”; possibly “Chiamami” or “Call to me”) and a date with the numeral “2” are roughly indicated. The Uffizi canvas includes a similar and largely illegible sheet affixed with wax to a rusticated stone corner.
This painting was first recorded in the collection of Patrick Home (1728–1808), who purchased a large number of artworks in Italy between 1771 and about 1778.[12] For nearly two hundred years, it remained at Home’s family seat, Paxton House, Berwickshire, which had been designed by John and James Adam in 1758. In 1811, the architect Robert Reid built an addition to the house that included one of the earliest and largest purpose-built picture galleries in Scotland. It is easy to imagine how, over the course of the nineteenth century, this painting suited the developing British taste for seventeenth-century Spanish artists such as Velázquez, Murillo, and Ribera. Although its attribution has was never fixed in early references, it was often thought to be by the eighteenth-century north Italian painter Giacomo Ceruti (
30.15 and
2019.263). Ceruti’s nickname, “Pitocchetto” (“The Little Beggar”) alludes to the way he continued and popularized a tradition that began in pioneering paintings such as this one.
David Pullins 2024
[1] The most thorough treatment is Brescia 2023, pp. 160–61. On the dating, discussed further below, see the importance of the depicted prints, analyzed in Dumontet and Rhodes 2012. An extensive argument for a Spanish connection is made in Riccardo Lattuada, “Vite di giovani picari, perdute o redente. Note su un curioso di Pedro Nuñez de Villavicencio e Luca Giordano al Prado, e un’aggiunta al catalogo di Nuñez: il Venditore di libri da risma Canesso,” forthcoming. Tremendous thanks to Maurizio Canesso, Véronique Damian, Keith Christiansen, and David Stone for sharing their research and opinions on this work.
[2] Uffizi, Inv. Poggio Imperiale 1860, no. 2028. Maggi 1986; Anna Bisceglia, Matteo Ceriana, and Simona Mammana eds.,
Buffoni, villani, e giocatori alla corte dei Medici, exh. cat., Palazzo Pitti, Florence 2016, pp. 128–31; Brescia 2023, pp. 161, where an important context is discussed for Iganzio Enrico Hugford, Vita di Anton Domenico Gabbiani, Pittor Fiorentino, Florence, 1762, p. 7.
[3] Magliani seems to have been associated with, even hosting, the Accademia dell’Arusa. See Edoardo Benenuti, Agostino Coltellini e l’Accademia degli apatisti a Firenze nel secolo XVII, Florence, 1910, p. 145. Mangiacani was more properly a “mesticatore” who dealt with a range of materials relating to paintings. See Semplici e continue diligenze. Conservazione e restauro dei dipinti nelle Gallerie di Firenze nel Settecento e nell’Ottocento, Florence, 2011, pp. 17–35.
[4] Many thanks to Robin O’Bryan for discussion on this point.
[5] Jonquil O’Reilly in conversation with David Pullins on September 11, 2024.
[6] For the seventeenth-century Florentine context and Medici court see Bisceglia, Ceriana, and Mammana 2016.
[7] Many thanks to Laura Carnelos for emphasizing this point in conversation June 23, 2024.
[8] Maggi 1986. On the reality of peddlers of such pamphlets, see Laura Carnelos,
I libri da risma: Catalogo dell edizioni Remondini a large diffusione (1650–1850), Milan, 2008, especially p. 13; Rosa Salzberg,
Ephemeral City: Cheap Print and Urban Culture in Renaissance Venice, Manchester, 2018. Although the depiction of Remondini’s pamphlets has been used to solidify an Italian origin for the painting, Mark McDonald notes that enormous numbers of such printed materials arrived in seventeenth-century Spain. On this and Spanish peddlers use of them, see Clive Griffin, “Itinerant Booksellers, Printers, and Pedlars in Sixteenth-Century Spain and Portugal” in Robin Myers, Michael Harris, and Giles Mandelbrote eds.,
Fairs, Markets, and the Itinerant Book Trade, London, 2007, pp. 43–60.
[9] An anonymous and comparatively crude French painting depicting a peddler of books at half-length, dated around 1623 and seemingly reliant on satirical typologies, emphasizes The Met work’s concern with interiority and portraiture. Musée du Loure, Paris (RF 1939 2). Nicolas Milovanovic,
Peintures françaises du XVIIe du musée du Louvre, Paris, 2021, no. 576.
[10] Many thanks to Laura Carnelos for this specification in conversation June 23, 2024. Also see Laura Carnelos, "Cheap Printing and Street Sellers in Early Modern Italy" in David Atkinson and Steve Roud eds.,
Cheap Print and the People: European Perspectives on Popular Literature, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2019.
[11] See Mattia Preti
Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew (Museo Nazionale d’Abruzzo, Aquila),
Christ and the Tribute Money (Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Naples), and
The Martyrdom of Saint Catherine of Alexandra (Chiesa di Santa Caterina d’Alessandria, La Valletta); for Luca Giordano, see
Christ and the Adulteress (private collection) and
Christ and the Doctors (Galleria Nazionale Barberini e Corsini, Rome). Works identified in Lattuada, “Vite di giovani picari, perdute o redente … ,” forthcoming. On the spread of handwritten texts across visual culture in seventeenth-century Italy, see Armando Petrucci ed.,
Scrittura e Popolo nella Roma Barocca 1585–1721, exh. cat., Rome, 1982.
[12] Many thanks to Fiona Salvesen Murrell, curator at Paxton House, who also points to Home’s travels in Italy, Prussia, and France between 1748–53. Though the painting has not yet been located in the expenses of these trips, Home often clumped art under large groupings such as “drawings, prints, and books.” Thanks to Rosemary Sweet for sharing her familiarity with the papers of Patrick Home. Information on Home and contextualization of his trip appear in Rosemary Sweet,
Cities and the Grand Tour: The British in Italy, ca. 1690–1820, Cambridge, 2012.
