Soldiers playing cards,
oil on canvas, 141 x 165 cm, framed

Provenance:
Pellizzari Collection, Villa Pellizzari di San Girolamo, Desenzano del Garda, 1931;
Private European collection

Exhibited:
Brescia, Palazzo Loggia, La mostra della pittura a Brescia nel Seicento e Settecento, 1935, no. 107 (as Giacomo Ceruti)

Literature:
G. Delogu, Appunti su Jacopo Ceruti pittore bresciano detto il ‘Pitocchetto’, in: L’Arte. Rivista bimestrale di storia dell’arte medioevale e moderna, vol. 34, 1931, p. 331, no. 17 (as Giacomo Ceruti);
E. Calabi et al., La Pittura a Brescia nel Seicento e Settecento, exhibition catalogue, Brescia 1935, cat. no. 107, p. XXXII; 27, pl. X (as Giacomo Ceruti);
M. Gregori, Giacomo Ceruti, Milan 1982, p. 431, mentioned under no. 44, (as a replica);
M. Gregori, B. Passamani et. al. (ed.), Giacomo Ceruti. Il Pitocchetto, exhibition catalogue, Milan 1987, p. 172, mentioned under cat. no. 15 (as a replica)

The present painting refers to a composition by Giacomo Ceruti in the Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo, Brescia (see M. Gregori, Giacomo Ceruti, Milan 1982, p. 431, no. 44). Several significant variations are introduced, such as the landscape view to the right, and the mastiff reclining by the wall, eyeing one of the players with hostility, perhaps intuiting that something is amiss amongst them. The figures are probably Grenzer or soldiers from the agricultural classes, usually of Slav origin, who were paid by both the Venetian and Habsburg armies. They did not wear the regular uniforms but rather wore the traditional dress of their ethnic place of origin.

The present painting was brought to public attention by Giuseppe Delogu as a work of Giacomo Ceruti in one of the first essays written on the painter, who is also known by the nickname of Pitocchetto for his habit of representing the lowest social classes of the era (called ‘pitocchi’). The artist, who was rediscovered in the 1920s by some of the greatest art critics including Roberto Longhi, Giovanni Testori and Mina Gregori, is recognised today as one of the most important exponents of the eighteenth-century Lombard realist tradition. From the start of his career, the artist’s oeuvre is characterised by a bold realism and a concise language which emerges from his famous scenes of popular life. The artist’s genre scenes are populated by washerwomen, carters and mendicants always depicted with great realism and dignity.

It is most likely that Ceruti trained between Milan and Brescia, even though this is not certainly documented. His first securely dated works are the canvases of sacred subjects painted in 1723 for the parish church of Rino di Sonico in Valle Camonica. The journey Ceruti made to Padua and Venice was to prove fundamental to his later stylistic development, marking the introduction of a lighter palette, influenced by the examples of Tiepolo and Pittoni, as well as signalling his conversion to more sympathetic subjects, such as his portraits of the Lombard nobility and his so-called ‘imaginary heads’.