An old woman with a tambourine,
oil on panel, 61 x 47.5 cm, framed

The present painting on panel depicts an elderly woman shown half-length holding a tambourine in her right hand as she turns her smiling gaze upon the viewer. In contrast to the painting’s overall earthen timbre, ranging from the browns of the subject’s dress to the dark ground, a tonal contrast is introduced by the white of the sitter’s clothing and the head scarf she wears.

Both the subject and the highly naturalistic style indicate a Neapolitan origin around the mid seventeenth century, by which time the innovations of Caravaggio’s painting had been assimilated and interpreted into an entirely personal idiom by Jusepe de Ribera (1591-1652), who in turn became the model for a sizable new generation of painters.

A work comparable to the present painting, with an identical subject, has been attributed to Ribera in the Koelliker collection, Milan. This work comes from the Milanese collection of the Cavaliere Giacomo Melzi (1721-1802), who had in turn purchased a substantial number of works from the collection of Carlo Firmian (1718-1782). Following the death of the latter an inventory was drafted, in which amongst others, there is: ‘Una vecchia plebea ridente con cembalo in mano, mezza figura grande dal vero, piena d’anima…’ [‘An old plebian woman laughing, holding a tambourine, half figure life size, full of life…’] assigned to ‘lo Spagnoletto’ (see A. Orlando ed., Pietro bellotti e dintorni. Dipinti veneti e Lombardi tra realtà e ‘genere’ dalla collezione Koelliker, Brescia 2007, pp. 29-32). The painting, which is now in the Koelliker collection, shows the same elderly woman, dressed in the same way, as that in the present painting. Presumably she also once held a tambourine, as the instrument is now only partially visible on the left side of the composition. The instrument is only partially visible because the canvas appears to have been cut to an oval, at the request of Giacomo Melzi, along with other works from his collection, in order to create a matching series of ‘heads’.

The present Old woman with a tambourine might have been intended as an allegorical representation of Hearing according to the fashion inaugurated at the time by Ribera’s famous series of the Senses. Indeed, a Young Woman with a Tambourine (Hearing) which is signed and dated 1637 (Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle) belonged to a fragmentary series; it shares the same thematic subject as the work under discussion.

The charged expression of our Old Woman verges on the grotesque, while the dynamically applied brushstrokes underscore each line on her face. This approach recalls the manner of a follower of Ribera who was so strongly influenced by his naturalism that he exaggerated it: such as was also the case in works by Francesco Fracanzano and the young Luca Giordano.