Child Drinks from a Wine Flask, Oil on Canvas, Early 1700s, Oil on Canvas

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Rare oil on canvas painting depicting a young boy drinking from a wine flask, typical of the "Bambocciate" artistic production … Read more Rare oil on canvas painting depicting a young boy drinking from a wine flask, typical of the "Bambocciate" artistic production of the painter Antonio Amorosi from the Marche region (Comunanza 1660 - Rome 1738). The canvas expresses those intrinsic qualities related to the productions in the catalog of the Marche painter, referring to the period when the artist embraced in his evolutionary path the invention of portraying children and effectively studying their different attitudes in the so-called bambocciate. from the last decade of the seventeenth century, he began experimenting with this genre, which he continued almost all his life due to the success of these amusing productions. Biography: Antonio Mercurio Amorosi (1660-1738) by Claudio Maggini, "Il Vello d'oro" art series directed by Girolamo de Vanna for Luisè Editore, Rimini, 1996 The canvas measures 38cm x 47cm. The gilded frame on which it is mounted is contemporary to the painting. We enclose a certificate of authenticity with the sale. Discover our articles on We report Wikipedia's of the painter: Born in Comunanza, in the Marche region in 1660, and moved to Rome in 1668 with the intention of studying to become a priest. His artistic interest and the 1676 acquaintance with the painter Giuseppe Ghezzi led him to change his mind, entering his workshop and staying there for 11 years. Around 1690 he became independent: his first work, signed and dated 1690, is the Portrait of the child Filippo Ricci, now preserved in the Weitzner private collection in New York. In 1699 he frescoed the City Hall of Civitavecchia with Pope Innocent III Receiving the Magistrates of the City and with the Madonna and Saint Fermo, which were destroyed in 1944; in 1702 he painted the altarpiece Saint Gregory and the Souls in Purgatory in the church of Santa Maria della Morte in Civitavecchia, a composition indebted to the art of Carlo Maratta, and Saint Anne, Saint Dominic and Saint John the Baptist. In the mid-17th century, the first bambocciate appeared, pictorial representations of scenes of popular life that have their roots in the pictorial culture of northern Europe and, although marked in Italy by grotesque and caricatured elements - the representation of the life of the "popolino" shown to the aristocratic clientele - they are a testament to the dissolution of the classical ideal. It is said that the taste of the circle of the Spanish ambassador to Rome, the Duke of Uceda, himself an important patron of Amorosi, stimulated the painter to compose genre scenes; in this environment, among other things, Amorosi met and became friends with his future biographer and art historian Leone Pascoli. His popular scenes remained a fundamental component of Amorosi's production until his death, guaranteeing requests from wealthy clients, most of whom belonged to the Roman aristocracy. In addition to genre scenes, he painted sacred themes, such as those found in altarpieces in Rome: in the church of San Biagio, the San Gregorio Nazianzeno, in that of San Andrea della Valle a Gloria di putti, for the church of San Rocco, but now preserved in Palazzo Venezia, a San Francesco da Paola of 1722 and in San Bernardino ai Monti La Gloria di san Bernardo, one of his last works. According to Pascoli, Amorosi was also a skilled copyist of Renaissance artists and a restorer. His son Filippo also collaborated in his father's workshop and was a painter of genre scenes. The Realist tendency Soon confused, due to the affinity of the themes treated, with the Danish painter Eberhard Keil, known in Italy as Monsù Bernardo, for Zampetti Amorosi shows "attention to the things of this world, not necessarily seen with the melancholic eye of the Nordic painter, but not for this with less sense of human participation on the part of those who, since the difficult childhood spent in a mountain resort, among shepherds and woodcutters, well had to know the difficulties of life and the humility of an existential condition, so profoundly different from that in which he then had to operate, once again in the midst of objective economic and social difficulties", while according to Argan, Amorosi "descends from the Bamboccianti, especially from Cerquozzi, and paints facts of daily life without the slightest taste for the costume scene. from the Spaniards and especially from Murillo, he has learned to consider poor children particularly dear to the Lord and paints them with an interest full of respect. He is not, as has been said, a Neo-Caravaggesque but he is the only exponent, in Rome, of a realist poetics and this, like every true realist poetics, is not expressed in an analytical copy of the truth, but in the positive seriousness and concreteness of the discourse, in the absence of gesture, movement, illusory spatiality and in the firmness of light, in the density of the mixtures that give the image as what it is and not as appearance and fiction. Amorosi, in short, arrives at the new culture, the culture of objectivity, by way of moral seriousness". And in fact the children, so often represented by him, are not putti dressed in modern clothes but truly children who look seriously at the observer, perhaps (Portrait of Filippo Ricci, coll. private, New York) with the apprehension of maintaining the necessary composure in front of the painter, who portrays them without pretending to want to represent anything other than what is shown, without allegorical and metasignifying references, because in that is already the reality and the truth of Amorosi; thus, (Portrait of a child with dog, coll. private) a child holds his puppy in his arms with the smile of affectionate pride that any child would show in the same circumstances and a young seamstress (Girl sewing, Thyssen - Bornemisza, Madrid) shows the same serious and arduous attention to the work she would have in the reality of her own home. See less