Giacomo Ceruti

Giacomo Ceruti
Self-portrait as a pilgrim, 1737
Born	Giacomo Antonio Melchiorre Ceruti (1698-10-13)13 October 1698 Milan
Died	28 August 1767(1767-08-28) (aged 68)
Nationality	Italian
Known for	Painting
Movement	Late Baroque

Giacomo Antonio Melchiorre Ceruti (13 October 1698 – 28 August 1767) was an Italian late Baroque painter, active in Northern Italy. He painted a variety of subjects, including portraits, religious and mythological scenes and still lifes. He is best known as a painter of large-scale genre scenes in which beggars, paupers, pilgrims, old people and simple craftsmen are depicted realistically in portrait form or engaged in their daily activities. This subject matter, which he treated with empathy, earned him the nickname Pitocchetto ('little beggar').

Life

He was born in Milan. In 1711 he moved with his family, comprising his parents, a brother and four little sisters, to the town of Brescia, where they settled in the parish of Sant'Agata. The motives behind this move are unknown. Possibly the family had relatives in Brescia. While Ceruti commenced his artistic career in the city, it is likely that his initial artistic training had already started in Milan. This training was likely not a traditional apprenticeship in the form of copying painting examples and learning the principles of composition. His first attempts at history painting were rather clumsy while he showed a great accomplishment in portrait and genre paintings. It is therefore likely that this initial training took place in contact with a Milan artist experienced in the latter two genres such as the painter Antonio Lucini.

Portrait of count Giovanni Maria Fenaroli

In 1717 at the age of 18, he married in Brescia Angiola Carozza, who was 10 years his senior. The couple had two children who both died in their infancy. From around 1721 to 1733 the artist is documented in Brescia. In 1723 he painted three altarpieces and four frescoes for the Saint Anthony Abbot parish church of Rino in Sonico in the Comunità montana di Valle Camonica (Brescia) for which he was paid in the form of a horse. The local nobility commissioned portraits and genre scenes from him. In 1724, he signed and dated his first known work, the Portrait of Count Giovanni Maria Fenaroli.

In Brescia he caught the attention of Andrea Memmo, the podestà who administered Brescia on behalf of Venice. Shortly before the expiration of his mandate in 1728, Memmo commissioned a series of 17 portraits of the past Venetian magistrates of Brescia to decorate the Palazzo del Broletto. These works were all lost or dispersed at the end of the 18th century. His patrons included some of the most prominent families of Brescia, such as the Fenarolis, the Avogadros, the Lechi and the Barbisoni, and of the Camonica Valley. He also created altarpieces and Christian-themed paintings.

Basket Porters Playing Cards

In 1733 he fled his creditors in Brescia and moved to Gandino. He had run up debts due to a failed investment in forest land for which he had taking out loans which he had become unable to repay. He obtained commissions for works for the Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta in Gandino. For the cornice of the Basilica Ceruti produced 28 paintings depicting prophets and characters from the Old Testament who are identified . The series was not executed at the same time and as a result those conserved at the entrances dated 1734 are executed in a late 17th century style, while the others dated to 1737 show the influence of Ceruti's study of the works of Tiepolo and Sebastiano Ricci. The Basilica conserves 12 other works by Ceruti, making it his most complete cycle. In 1734, he signed and dated the Our Lady of the Rosary for the Visitazione di Santa Maria ad Elisabetta Church.

The Laundress (1735), Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo, Brescia

He visited Venice in 1736 at the invitation of Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg, marshal of the Venetian Republic and an avid art collector. Ceruti painted portraits, landscapes, still lifes and scenes with paupers for the marshal. Through the marshal he came into contact with an artistic milieu with international tastes, resulting in a profound maturation in his pictorial language. During his stay in Venice he was further able to study the works of Venetian artists such as Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and Giovanni Battista Pittoni, which would influence his later works. In this period, he obtained an important commission to paint an altarpiece for the Basilica of Saint Anthony of Padua.

Ceruti probably met the young bookseller Matilde De Angelis in Schulenburg's milieu. She became his mistress and the couple had a daughter in 1737 and a further two children later. He remained married to his wife while maintaining his relationship with his mistress with whom he moved around in different cities in northern Italy.

Boy with a dog, Ulster Museum

After his stay in Venice Ceruti went back to work in Gandino. In 1742 he moved with his mistress to his birth city Milan. His first wife continued to reside in Brescia. In Milan he obtained the patronage of some of the leading families including the Belgioioso, the Medici di Marignano and the Litta. They commissioned him to paint their portraits and pastoral idylls in which the humble classes were depicted in an Arcadian vision. He also starts paintings mythological subjects for which he relied on prints by Northern European artists.

He died at an unknown location before 1 November 1768, the day his widow Matilde De Angelis died in the Milan parish of S. Raffaele.

Work

While he also painted still-life paintings, religious and mythological scenes, Ceruti is best known for his genre paintings, especially of beggars and the poor, whom he painted realistically and endowed with unusual dignity and individuality.

Ceruti gave particular attention to this subject matter during the period 1725 to 1740, and about 50 of his genre paintings from these years survive.

Young woman with a dove

A characteristic painting is his Woman with a Dog which portrays a rather plain subject sympathetically and without idealization. Like most of his figures, she appears before an undifferentiated dark background. When Ceruti attempted to represent deep space, the results were frequently awkward. His landscape backgrounds resemble stage flats and are often copied from print sources, such as the engravings of Jacques Callot. The realism Ceruti brought to his genre paintings also distinguishes his portraits and still lifes, while it is less apparent in his somewhat conventional decorative paintings for churches, including frescoes for the Basilica Santa Maria Assunta of Gandino and an altarpiece for Santa Lucia in Padua. This limitation is not unique to Ceruti. The Brescian painter from the late 16th century, Giovanni Battista Moroni, was similarly known for expressive portraits, and drab religious paintings.

Gallery

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  Dwarf (1720s), private collection
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  Shoemakers (c. 1727), Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo, Brescia
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  Mother with her children (c. 1733), private collection
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  Porter sitting on a basket (c. 1735), Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan
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  Two Beggars in a Wood
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  Beggar Girl and Woman Spinning
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  Girls' School
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  Card Players
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  Two Beggars (c. 1737), Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo, Brescia
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  Evening at the Town Square or (Porters playing Cards (1730), Palazzo Madama, Turin
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  Meeting at the well
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  Kitchen still life with meat and vegetables on a table top, private collection
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  Still life with birds, lobster and hare, private collection
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  Still Life with Bread, Salami, and Nuts
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  Portrait of a young woman on a horse
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  Portrait of Marcquis Carlo Cosimo Medici di Marignano
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  The Colascione player (c. 1740), private collection
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  Smoking Man in Turban, private collection
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  Portrait of an old man with a pug, private collection
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  Virgin and Child with St. Lucy and St. Roch (c. 1740), Santa Lucia, Padua