Beggar’s Family

Bartolomeo Pinelli

Basic information

ID: Г-IV-1720
Author: Bartolomeo Pinelli
Name: Beggar’s Family
Date of creation: 1810s
Technique: etching watercolour
Material: paper
Dimensions (height x width, cm): 10 x 16

Additionally

Type: graphic art
Genre: genre art
Provenance: Collection of Faina Tarashchanska (Lviv), 1966

Information about author

Author: Bartolomeo Pinelli
Artist's lifetime: 1781–1835
Country: Italy
Biography: Bartolomeo Pinelli (1781, Rome – 1835, ibid.) was an Italian painter, engraver, and sculptor. He was the son of the ceramist G. B. Pinelli. Bartolomeo was born in the Trastevere district (over the Tiber River). He studied in Bologna and later at the Academy of Saint Luke in Rome. The artist attended the Academy of Felice Giani, an Italian painter of the Neoclassic style, from whom he adopted the drawing style. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Pinelli took an interest in the engravings of the Renaissance, namely in the works by Marcantonio Raimondi, and started making etchings and lithographs out of his drawings. In 1809, Pinelli created his first series of watercolour etchings – Collection of Fifty Picturesque Costumes (Raccolta di Cinquanta Costumi Pittoreschi). The album was reissued in 1814 and 1815. In 1816, a new version of the album under the title New Collection of Fifty Picturesque Costumes (Nuova Raccolta di Cinquanta Costumi Pittoreschi incisi di acqua forte) was released. Most of the Lviv engravings are from this series. The central theme of the artist's work is genre scenes (Costumi), which he saw in Rome and Naples, as well as the provinces of Abruzzo and Molise. Pinelli's engravings are not only of artistic value but also carry important ethnographic information. In the 1820s and 1830s, the artist created drawings and engravings for poems by Torquato Tasso (1827–1829) and the novel "Don Quixote" (1834) by Miguel de Cervantes. One of Pinelli's famous series of drawings is "Seven Hills of Rome" (Sette colli di Roma) (1827–1830). The artist's works are housed in many Italian museums and collections of other countries.

Object description

It is a unique version of B. Pinelli's "Beggar's Family" composition. Unlike all other known variants, where a passerby is walking uninterestedly by a woman who is covering her head with a cloth and begging people to help her child, in this composition, a rich man, covered with the drapery of a blue coat, is outstretching his hand and giving a coin to a needy family. The work Famiglia indigente was first performed by Pinelli in 1815; then, the author repeated it unchanged in 1816. The third version of the engraving was published in the album Pittoreskes Italien in Leipzig in 1840. On that engraving, a man stood before a cloth-covered woman with three children; it was unclear what his following actions would be. In the Lviv version of the composition, a passerby is depicted giving alms. The main character is a cute child sleeping peacefully, lying on a crumpled bedding on the pavement. A red spot of the bedding accentuates the plump figure of the child. The action takes place in the evening street of an empty city. The tension is created by dimmed watercolour tones and the black emptiness of window openings. The work is generally dominated by a sentimental mood typical of early Romanticism.

Inscriptions

In the lower right corner, there is the author's signature – Pinelli f. [fecit]. In the centre of the engraving, under the image, is the work's title Famiglia indigente. The number "19" is in the upper right corner above the plate.

Legal regulation

Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery

Beggar’s Family

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