(Milan 1698–1767)
Soldiers playing cards,
oil on canvas, 196 x 143 cm, framed

Provenance:
Steffanoni collection, Bergamo, early 19th century;
Suardo collection, Rome, 1953;
with Galleria Sestieri, Rome, 1968;
with Algranti, Milan, 1969;
Private collection, Switzerland

Exhibited:
Milan, Palazzo Reale and Museo del Duomo, Settecento Lombardo, 1 February – 28 April 1991, pp. 139-140 cat. no. I. 105, illustrated p. 141 (as Giacomo Ceruti);
Milan, Robilant + Voena, Giacomo Ceruti 1698-1767. Popolo e Nobiltà alla vigilia dell’età dei Lumi, 30 October - 13 December 2013, pp. 44-46 cat. no. 9 (as Giacomo Ceruti)

Literature:
R. Cipriani/R. Longhi/G. Testori (eds.), I pittori della realtà in Lombardia, exhibition catalogue, Milan 1953, mentioned under cat. 121, p. 67 (as Giacomo Ceruti);
R. Bassi-Rathgeb, Un ritratto aulico del Pitocchetto, in: Bollettino del Museo Civico di Padova, 1965, nr. 54, p. 117 (as Giacomo Ceruti);
M. Gregori, Giacomo Ceruti, Cinisello Balsamo 1982, p. 431 cat. no. 45 (as Giacomo Ceruti);
F. Noris, Bartolomeo Nazari, in: I Pittori Bergamaschi dal XIII al XIX secolo. Il Settecento, Bergamo 1982, vol. I, p. 237 cat. no. 53, illustrated p. 245 (as Bartolomeo Nazari);
M. Bona Castellotti, La pittura lombarda del Settecento. Repertori fotografici, Milan 1986, tav. 169 (as Giacomo Ceruti);
F. Frangi, in: R. Bossagli/V. Terraroli (eds.), Settecento Lombardo, exhibition catalogue, Milan 1991, pp. 139-140 cat. no. I. 105, illustrated p. 141 (as Giacomo Ceruti);
S. Zuffi, Pittura in Lombardia: dall’età Spagnola al Neoclassicismo, Milan 2000, illustrated p. 200 (as Giacomo Ceruti);
F. Frangi, in: E. Lucchesi Ragni/R. Stradiotti (eds.), Da Romanino e Moretto a Ceruti. Tesori ritrovati della Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo, exhibition catalogue, Brescia 2005 & Conegliano 2006, p. 165, illustrated p. 164 (cited under cat. no. 24, as Giacomo Ceruti);
E. Lucchesi Ragni, in: M. Bona Castellotti/E. Lucchesi Ragni (eds.), Pinacoteca Tosio Matrinengo. Catalogo delle opere. Seicento e Settecento, exhibition catalogue, Venice 2011, p. 145 (cited under cat. no. 67, as Giacomo Ceruti);
F. Frangi, in: F. Frangi/A. Morandotti (eds.), Giacomo Ceruti 1698–1767. Popolo e Nobiltà alla vigilia dell’età dei Lumi, exhibition catalogue, Milan 2013, pp. 44-46, cat. no. 9 (as Giacomo Ceruti)

The present painting is registered in the Fototeca Zeri under no. 72248 (as Giacomo Ceruti).

This composition depicts soldiers enjoying a moment of relaxation outside, by a gate. Using a military drum, the men improvise a table on which to play cards, probably a hand of scopa since they play with a pack of trevigian-venetian cards. This detail, like others in the painting, may identify the locality, as well as the protagonists of this genre group portrait. Their outfits are singular and point to the so-called Oltremarini or Schiavoni, who foot soldiers of the Venetian army, and from the beginning of the eighteenth century also for the Habsburg army. They are the grenzer, the frontier infantry, formed by farmer-soldiers who were paid by gifts or indemnities in exchange for their military service. They were mainly employed at periphery areas of territory. These soldiers came from diffused origins and were Georgians, Slavs, Dalmatians, Croatians, Balcans, Transilvanians or Hungarians and they were largely characterised by a free and gypsy-like spirit. As they lacked a uniform, they wore the typical costumes of their various ethnicities, thereby explaining their diversity of cloathing in the present compostion. Here, they almost all wear a red mantle, but their coats could be of various colours: Croatians and Slavs for example wore dark brown jackets, while those that came from Germanic states wore a tricorn hat and white coat, similar to those worn by the youngest figure on the left in the present. The traditional hats of the Slavs were cylindrical or truncated, usually of felt, or of bear or calf skin, sometimes with black ostrich feathers or with a cap of bright red wool: such as the types that appear in this painting.

These soldiers, known as Oltremarini were reknowned for their resilience and strength, but they were little inclined to be disciplined. The soldiers in the present painting seem perfectly to mirror this description: the cold climate is witnessed by their clothing, especially by the soldier in the background who wraps himself closely in his cloak; their expressions are worn and their appearance fits inwell with the themes preferred by Giacomo Ceruti.

Ceruti would have had opportunities to see such soldiers represent here in the territories of Milan, Brescia and the Veneto and he depicted them on other occasions, for example the Portrait of a Smoker in the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, Palazzo Barberini, Rome (inv. no. 1987).

Another composition by Ceruti also representing soldiers playing cards, is in the Museo Tosio Martinengo, Brescia (inv. no. 2383). Soldiers of this type were involved in the Polish War of Succession (1733-1738) and Longhi dated this painting to this period.

The present painting shows an awareness of engravings by German artists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, where the representation of the card game is connected to companies. This painting, in fact, is closely related to an engraving of 1512 by Hans Sebald Beham, depicted The Lanzichenecchi playing cards on a drum, or Gambling, in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (see M. Gregori in literature). The theme of the card game in the repertoire of genre scenes was widely diffused, such as Caravaggio’s Cardsharps of 1594, in the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth.

The Lombard origin of Caravaggio is an important aspect for the development of the cultural and artistic aspects of the so-called ‘Pittori della realtà’ during the eighteenth century in northern Italy. In fact, even if the art of Caravaggio founds the biggest success in Rome and southern Italy, also in Lombardy the imprinting of the painter marks forever the poetry of the artists. The Lombard artists of the eighteenth century evolved their style from Caravaggio’s language, which introduced poors, beggars and gypsies in his paintings. They created an art that represents reality and that adheres to nature. The humblest social runks, keep from the every-day realty, are the principal subjects of the Lombard realism, and Antonio Cifrondi, Giacomo Cipper and Giacomo Ceruti were the greatest exponent of this artistic movement.

Giacomo Ceruti was born in Milan, but was largely active in Brescia, the Veneto and Padua; he was also known by the pseudonym ‘il Pitocchetto’ specifically because of the representation of the lowly social class. Giacomo Ceruti’s painting was much appreciated in Northern Europe, and especially in Austria, given also the important commissioning relationships with Marshal Matthias von der Schulenburg (1661–1747), collector and great estimator of the painter’s genre subjects.

Technical analysis by Gianluca Poldi:

There is an interesting compositional change in this painting, as IR images reveal. The figure playing cards behind the drum and the figure standing directly behind him appear to have been added later by the artist. Initially Ceruti painted a man placed between these two figures, positioned frontally, looking straight out. The short figure on the left was also probably added later, to replace the original man. The use of a figure looking out of a composition, as if to involve the viewer, was a compositional device often used by Ceruti. In this case, the original concept of putting a figure in the centre of the composition was considered ineffective by the artist, possibly because it may have distracted from the figures playing cards. The soldier in the background appears to have been painted over the fence. Some details have become transparent over time, for example the rifle and the brown sleeve of the player.

The painting is made with quite quick brushstrokes, with great skill, as is usual in Ceruti’s work.

He worked over a brown-red ground, that can be seen under the cloudy grey sky, made with lead white and black pigment. The pigment, detected by means of Reflectance Spectroscopy, include earths and ochres, from yellow to red and brown ones, the brilliant vermillion red and indigo for the blue colours. Indigo could reach a deep or bright hue, and it was used to depict blue clothes, as they were also dyed with the same pigment of indigo.