(Bologna 1665–1747)
Singer at the Spinet with Admirers,
oil on canvas, 59 x 47.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Bologna

Literature:
M. P. Merriman, Comedy, Reality and Development of Genre Painting in Italy, in: J. T. Spike (ed.), Giuseppe Maria Crespi and the emergence of genre painting in Italy, exhibition catalogue, Florence 1986, pp. 52-53, fig. 45, and p. 158, mentioned under no. 24, note 1;
A. Emiliani (ed.), Giuseppe Maria Crespi 1665-1747, Bologna 1990, p. 258, mentioned under no. 131

The present work by Giuseppe Maria Crespi represents a scene of gallantry, of which another version, of similar size (57.6 x 45.7 cm), is conserved in the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence (see M. P. Merriman, Giuseppe Maria Crespi, Milan 1980, p. 316, no. 284). The subject has been related to a cycle of paintings on copper, which according to one of Crespi’s principal biographers, Giampietro Zanotti, were executed by the artist for a British patron (see G. Zanotti, Storia dell’Accademia Clementina di Bologna, Bologna 1739, II, p. 59). The cycle described the rise and fall of an opera singer of humble origins, casting her story with clearly comic overtones. Indeed this is also evident in the present work: here Crespi adopts the commedia dell’arte expedient of the comic aside, thereby making it evident that only the two protagonists are convinced of their own actions, which moreover are ridiculed by the other actors on the stage, who turn to the spectator with an air of knowing mockery.

The young gallant in the present painting is seen giving a string of pearls to the singer, who interrupts her performance at the spinet to turn with a gesture of modesty to accept the gentleman’s gift. Her gestures are affected however, thus revealing the transformation of seeming humility into the expression of a successful diva corrupted by vice. Indeed, at the sight of the man’s blind infatuation, the clamour of hilarity explodes among the onlookers all around them. On the left a male figure grins out with complicity, while on the right a serving woman points to a youth who is crowning the ignorant gallant with the horns traditional to the cuckold. Other serving maids, like the secondary characters in a stage play, look on amused: their movements are vital and fresh in comparison to the rigidity of the two protagonists. The scene unfolds in an aristocratically styled interior, which appears ‘invented’ rather than taken from life, so as to better serve the narrative character of the episode.

On stylistic grounds this painting, which has been singled out as of superior quality to the version in the Uffizi (see literature), is dated to around the mid 1730s. Various caricatured figures reoccur in other late works by Crespi, such as the man in the left foreground here, who can also be found in the study for the Martyrdom of Pietro d’Arbues (Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna, see: M. P. Merriman, Ibid., 1980, p. 263, no. 109). In the present painting the now elderly artist immortalized with striking ability a cross section of the society of his age, revealing all its contradictions and contrasts, drawing attention to the vitality of the lower classes and the degeneration of the wealthier and revealing a singular mixture of compassion, irony and indignation. The work’s moralizing intention resolves in measured criticism neither excessively farcical nor too merciless. This kind of painting had a profound influence on the production of painters in the next generation, and especially on the venetian Pietro Longhi (1701-1785) who undertook a period of apprenticeship at Bologna in Crespi’s studio.