A Woman with a Dog

The Artist: Only in the twentieth century did Ceruti emerge from obscurity to take his place among the major figures of eighteenth-century Italian painting. His reputation is based on his paintings of impoverished people, whom he depicts not as comedic, dehumanized figures or as types, but as individuals—the undeserving victims from the margins of society (see fig. 1 above). Ceruti’s paintings of beggars and the impoverished are landmarks in the history of European art and stand out for their seemingly unvarnished directness, shorn of the conventions and poetic conceit that viewed poverty through the lens of an Arcadian/bucolic idyll. Instead of depicting his subjects as people liberated from the constraints of organized society and living a picturesque life, Ceruti—particularly in his early work—conferred on the victims of a hierarchical society their own human dignity. As the Italian scholar Francesco Frangi has noted: “As though by magic, the petty theater of winks and allusions dissolves, displaced by a new dimension—more conceptual than expressive in character—by which the poor, instead of being presented as the marionettes of a comic or allegorical game, assume the role of protagonist of the scene, no longer the vehicle of other meanings but as unique, true objects of representation, with all the changes in register and awareness that such a new proposition implies.” Ceruti’s fame from these pictures is reflected in his nickname, il Pitochetto: the little beggar. These paintings—the most celebrated come from a series usually referred to as the Padronella cycle (from the castle where some of the pictures were seen by Giuseppe Delogu and published in 1931)—pose fundamental questions: what was their function, how were they seen and understood, and how is it that Ceruti came to show such apparent empathy with their subjects?

The Met’s painting of a woman with a dog played a part in the rediscovery of this artist, having been shown in Florence in 1922 as the work of the Austrian-born painter Giacomo Francesco Cipper, also known as Il Todeschini (1664–1736), whose work probably influenced that of Ceruti. On that occasion its authorship was recognized by Roberto Longhi (1922), whose writings did much to advance the study of the artist.

Ceruti’s life was as unconventional as the images he painted. Born in Milan to a modest family, when still young he moved to the Lombard city of Brescia, where, at age eighteen, he married Angiola Carozza, a woman twenty years older than himself. When, in 1736, he moved to Venice and Padua, he left his wife in Brescia and began living with another woman, Metilde Angelisi, who appears in Paduan documents as his “wife”. This situation came to a head in 1746. He moved with Metilde to Piacenza, where documents also place Angiola, the two women apparently belonging to two separate households. Eventually, Metilde returned to Padua while Ceruti returned to Milan, where he was finally reunited with his first wife. He adopted a son (all but one of his children had died in childhood). Bizarrely, despite their difference in age, Angiola and Metilde both died in 1768 (Metilde was by then living in Padua with another man).

As noted above, Ceruti’s most significant pictures were painted in Brescia. A decisive turn came about as a result of his move to Venice, with its international, cosmopolitan culture. In 1736 he was paid for pictures of beggars by Marshall von Schulenburg, who was forming an outstanding collection in his palace on the Grand Canal. The paintings take on a more sophisticated as well as conventional appearance. The sitters now look out at the viewer, striking a pose, and often smiling. Ceruti shows new interest in exotic dress and the figures—mostly depicted quarter- or half-length—show the influence of Piazzetta and lose much of that harsh quality of truthfulness that makes the Brescian paintings so remarkable. The fact that the inventory drawn up at Ceruti’s death reveals that he owned several volumes of the writings of Pietro Metastasio—the celebrated poet/librettist—suggests an intersection with theater and literary practice, and this is perhaps further indicated by two self-portraits in which he assumes, in one, the clothes of a pilgrim and, in the other, the sixteenth-century-style clothes of a gentleman. They are staged likenesses.

Throughout his career Ceruti painted altarpieces, but there is little that is distinctive about them. Indeed, they seem strangely devoid of the innovative naturalism that informs his portraits and paintings of the poor, on which his reputation rests.

The Picture: Dressed in the plain clothes of a servant or common worker, with an apron tied around her waist and a crucifix on a cord tied around her neck, this young woman has adorned her hair with flowers, wears earrings, and seems prepared to go out, dog in arm. The pose she strikes, with her right arm extended, the palm of her hand turned toward the viewer with the index finger pointing, is commonplace for portraits of aristocrats and the well-to-do. The sitter’s toothy smile and the obvious comparison drawn between her expression and that of her pet—gazing attentively at the viewer, one ear alert, the other turned down—signal a comedic intent (see Gregori 1987). Clever servants were a fixture of eighteenth century theater. In Pergolesi’s intermezzo La serva padrona, which premiered in Naples in 1733, a servant conceives a scheme whereby she tricks her employer into marrying her. What originally gave this picture added pungency was its pendant (identified by Testori 1966) of a more simply dressed servant holding a cat. Her dark hair is unadorned and she wears no earrings, but she too strikes a pose, with one arm akimbo, and her expression is parodied by that of the wide-eyed stare of her cat, whose neck is tied with a bow. The early history of these two paintings is not known, but there is a consensus that they date to the 1740s—the period following Ceruti’s move to Venice and Padua in 1736. As noted above in the biography, this period is marked by a move away from the unadorned naturalism of Ceruti’s earlier work, with its frank depiction of an impoverished reality, toward the mastery of artistic conventions that have the effect of veiling the coarseness of the sitter’s real situation. It is the sophisticated and ironic play between the conventions of aristocratic portraiture and the lower class subject and the analogy of pictorial with theatrical traditions that distinguish the Woman with a Dog.

Keith Christiansen 2019

Achillito Chiesa, Milan (by 1922–at least 1924); ?private collection, Florence (by 1928–30; sold through Count Umberto Gnoli, Rome, to The Met)

Florence. Palazzo Pitti. "Mostra della pittura italiana del Sei e Settecento," April–October 1922, no. 1011 (as by Todeschini, lent by Achillito Chiesa).

Hartford, Conn. Wadsworth Atheneum. "43 Portraits," January 26–February 10, 1937, no. 28 (as by Todeschini).

Turin. Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna. "Giacomo Ceruti e la ritrattistica del suo tempo nell'Italia Settentrionale," February–March 1967, no. 14 (as by Ceruti).

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. "Masterpieces of Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," September 16–November 1, 1970, unnumbered cat. (p. 28).

Brescia. Monastero di S. Giulia. "Giacomo Ceruti: Il Pitocchetto," June 13–October 31, 1987, no. 74.

Roberto Longhi. marginal notes in the exhibition catalogue "Mostra della pittura italiana del Sei e Settecento in Palazzo Pitti," 1922. [1922] [published in Roberto Longhi, "Scritti giovanili: 1912–1922," Florence, 1961, p. 511, fig. 260], attributes it to Ceruti.

U[go]. Ojetti, L[uigi]. Dami, and N[ello]. Tarchiani. La pittura italiana del seicento e del settecento alla mostra di Palazzo Pitti. Milan, 1924, pl. 291, as by Todeschini; as in the Chiesa collection, Milan.

Francesco Malaguzzi Valeri. "La Galleria Càmpori." Cronache d'arte 1 (September–October 1924), p. 240, as by Todeschini.

Roberto Longhi. "Di Gaspare Traversi." Vita artistica 2 (August–September 1927), p. 167 n. 62 [reprinted in Ref. Longhi 1967, p. 216 n. 62], publishes his attribution to Ceruti [see Ref. Longhi 1922].

Giuseppe Delogu. Pittori minori liguri lombardi piemontesi del Seicento e del Settecento. Venice, 1931, p. 206 n. 3, notes Longhi's attribution to Ceruti.

Giuseppe Delogu. "Appunti su Jacopo Ceruti pittore bresciano detto il 'Pitocchetto'." L'arte, n.s., 2 (July 1931), pp. 312–13.

Harry B. Wehle. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: A Catalogue of Italian, Spanish, and Byzantine Paintings. New York, 1940, p. 268, ill., as by Todeschini.

Federico Zeri. Letter. November 12, 1948, supports Longhi's attribution to Ceruti.

Renata Cipriani and Giovanni Testori. I pittori della realtà in Lombardia. Exh. cat., Palazzo Reale. Milan, 1953, p. 67, under no. 120, as by Ceruti.

Karl-Gustaf Hedén. "Des Ceruti en Suède? (A propos de la découverte d'un portrait inconnu)." Göteborgs Konstmuseum Årstryck (1953), pp. 50–51, 53, as by Ceruti.

Josephine L. Allen and Elizabeth E. Gardner. A Concise Catalogue of the European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1954, p. 96.

Antonio Morassi. Letter. July 15, 1955, attributes it to Ceruti.

M[iklós]. Mojzer. "Giacomo Francesco Cipper." Acta Historiae Artium 4, nos. 1–2 (1956), pp. 80, 96 n. 21, notes Longhi's attribution to Ceruti, but thinks it is more likely an early work by Todeschini (Cipper) because of "the stiffer portrayal and arrangement".

Ivàn Fenyö. Letter to Theodore Rousseau. February 10, 1963, remarks that Mojzer [see Ref. 1956] no longer thinks it is by Cipper (Todeschini), and nor does he; finds it closer to Ceruti and to Monsù Bernardo-Keil (Bernhard Keil).

Ivàn Fenyö. Letter to Theodore Rousseau. October 8, 1963, tentatively accepts the attribution to Ceruti, although finding from photographs that the work has "not quite the high quality" of this artist.

Giovanni Testori. Giacomo Ceruti. Exh. cat., Finarte. Milan, 1966, p. 6, wrongly as in the Kress Collection, America; calls it a pendant to Ceruti's "Woman with a Cat" (now private collection; formerly Fumagalli collection, Monza).

Luigi Mallé and Giovanni Testori. Giacomo Ceruti e la ritrattistica del suo tempo nell'Italia Settentrionale. Exh. cat., Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna. Turin, 1967, p. 48, no. 14, pl. 53.

Roberto Longhi. Opere complete di Roberto Longhi. Vol. 2, part 1, Saggi e ricerche: 1925–1928. Florence, 1967, p. 216 n. 62 [repr. of Ref. Longhi 1927].

Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, Mass., 1972, pp. 51, 532, 607.

Giulio Melzi d'Eril. La Galleria Melzi e il collezionismo milanese del tardo Settecento. Milan, 1973, p. 128, compares the MMA picture and "Woman with a Cat" (formerly Fumagalli collection, Monza) with a pair of paintings by Ceruti, "Old Man with a Cat" and "Old Man with a Dog," formerly in the Melzi collection, Milan (now Gallarati Scotti, Milan).

G. Guandalini in Mostra di opere restaurate, secoli XIV–XIX. Exh. cat., location unknown, Modena. 1980, p. 66.

Mina Gregori. Giacomo Ceruti. Bergamo, 1982, pp. 18, 89 n. 86, pp. 465–66, no. 197, ill. p. 361 (color), calls it the pendant to "Woman with a Cat" in a private collection (formerly Fumagalli collection, Monza); considers the pair contemporary with Ceruti's works for the Palazzo Busseti, Tortona, dating them after 1740; observes a connection with Cipper (Todeschini) during this period.

Mina Gregori in Giacomo Ceruti: Il Pitocchetto. Exh. cat., Comune di Brescia, Monastero di S. Giulia. Milan, 1987, p. 45, dates it to the 1740s; remarks that the laughing expression of the figure, in contrast to the sober mood of Ceruti's earlier paintings, recalls the work of Todeschini and conventions of the comic pictorial tradition.

Francesco Frangi in Giacomo Ceruti: Il Pitocchetto. Exh. cat., Comune di Brescia, Monastero di S. Giulia. Milan, 1987, pp. 191–92, no. 74, ill. p. 154 (color), calls it the pendant to the "Woman with a Cat" formerly in the Fumagalli collection; accepts Gregori's [see Refs. 1982 and 1987] dating to the 1740s.

Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 109, ill.

Damages were sustained to the paint surface along the border of the picture and a tacking edge can be detected about two and one-half inches from the present edge of the canvas, which implies that the picture was cropped at one time with the outside edge of the painting folded over the canvas stretcher. At a later point (but before entering the Museum), the original canvas edge was unfolded and the picture was restored to its original size. The painting's pendant should be examined to see if it shares this condition problem. [Charlotte Hale, Fall 2000]