(Lucca 1603–1681/82)
A shepherd and shepherdess playing musical instruments in a landscape,
oil on canvas, 180 x 119 cm, framed

Provenance:
sale, Christie’s, London, 15 December 1989, lot 47 (as Pietro Paolini);
art market, Lugano, 1995;
Private European collection

Exhibited:
Campione d’Italia, Galleria Civica San Zenone, L’impronta di Caravaggio. Dipinti caravaggeschi in collezione privata, 7 July – 21 August 2011, no. 3 (as Pietro Paolini)

Literature:
E. Giffi, Paolini, Pietro, in: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 81, Rome 2014, p. 81

The present painting is registered in the Fototeca Zeri under no. 55802 (as Pietro Paolini).

We are grateful to Patrizia Giusti Maccari for confirming the attribution of the present painting on the basis of a photograph.

Reflecting the taste for bucolic and pastoral subjects that was broadly diffused during the first half of the seventeenth century, this painting represents a shepherd and shepherdess contentedly playing musical instruments in a landscape. The depiction of the woman playing a lute is bathed in a gentle light conveying a suffused sensual air that is in striking contrast to the strongly caricatured features of the man who glances out at the spectator with a direct and whimsical expression.

The figure of the shepherd reoccurs in other works by Paolini, such as the Lute player in the Ponce Museum, Puerto Rico (see P. Giusti Maccari, Pietro Paolini pittore lucchese 1603-1681, Lucca 1987, p. 136, no. 56, fig. 54) and similar bald headed figures, known as mondoni, were represented in other genre paintings. The subject of elderly, bald headed figures derived from models developed by Guido Reni, such as the Schiavo di Ripa Grande in the Galleria Spada, Rome.

The present painting depicts a theme that was celebrated in Paolini’s oeuvre and is recorded by his biographer Filippo Baldinucci who stated that the artist painted ‘marvellously certain whimsical inventions of villains playing the pipes’ [‘a maraviglia certi capricci ed invenzioni di villani che suonano pifferi’] (see F. Baldinucci, Notizie de’ professori del disegno, VI, Florence 1728, p. 366).

The present work belongs to Paolini’s maturity, when the artist had returned to his native Lucca. Here it has been suggested that he was influenced by poetry from which he derived the subtly allusive themes and subjects that characterise his works, loaded with obscure symbolism, such as are to be found the present painting.

Pietro Paolini trained in Rome during the 1620s in the studio of Angelo Caroselli, where he came into direct contact with the artistic innovations of Caravaggio and his followers. Subsequently a period in Venice encouraged him to lighten his palette. He returned definitively to Lucca during the 1630s where he continued a successful career and eventually established a drawing academy.