Italian school, 17th century - Lot 1

Italian school, 17th century Peasant woman bothered by a man Oil on canvas 82.5 × 57.5 cm 99 x 74 cm with frame Provenance : Private collection The encounter between a common woman and an intruder, presumably from another walk of life, is a characteristic motif that greatly inspired Italian genre painters. This scene of rustic gallantry is an idealized portrayal of the common people that playfully evokes social and amorous transgressions. Genre painting underwent extraordinary development in 17th-century Italy. It was born of the encounter between the naturalism of Caravaggio, who influenced many artists, and the contribution of Flemish and Dutch artists who settled in Italy. The genre began in Rome in the 1620s and 1630s with the Dutch painter Pieter van Laer, Il Bamboccio, and his disciples and followers, who specialized in small-format paintings depicting everyday reality. The genre then spread to all regions of Italy, albeit with its own peculiarities. Although severely condemned by theorists of classical aesthetics, these works enjoyed immense commercial success and were sought after by the great aristocracy and the intellectual elite. The stylistic influence of Massimo Stanzione (1585-1656) is so obvious that our painting may well have been painted in Naples. Stanzione and his pupils, however, devoted their work to the grand genre. However, as Nicola Spinosa pointed out in 1998 in his essay "La pittura con scene di genere a Napoli nel Sei e Settecento "1 , the compositions of the master and his followers include fragments and episodes drawn from reality, with a "tamed" naturalism and a cultivated sensibility. It seems to be this naturalism, adapted to an intellectual audience, that we find in this attractive painting.