Where the ends never quite meet
Destitution row “Giacomo Ceruti: A Compassionate Eye” at the Getty by Bondo Wyszpolski “Beggar” (about 1735-40), by Giacomo Ceruti. Oil on canvas; Gothenburg Museum of Art Photo: Gothenburg Museum of Art / Hossein SehatlouI’ve never seen so much tattered clothing in one place. Giacomo Ceruti (1698-1767), who was active in Northern Italy, seems to have been a fairly prolific and highly-regarded painter, but like most people, artists or otherwise, he slipped through the trapdoor of history and was only plucked out of it and re-celebrated in the early 20th century. Although he painted the portraits of the well-to-do and various notable people of his time, “for Ceruti, painting a genre figure was as exacting as painting a portrait.” On that note, he was nicknamed Il Pitocchetto (or, the little beggar), not because he was necessarily one himself, but on account of one subject to which he devoted much of his work: the impoverished, and those on the lowest rung of the social ladder. Ceruti wasn’t the first painter to depict the truly downtrodden; Carovaggio, La Tour, and the brothers La Nain had, so to speak, landed there ahead of him. However, Ceruti displayed something in his pictures…
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