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Woman of Frascati and a Hermit

Bartolomeo Pinelli

Basic information

ID: Г-IV-1732
Author: Bartolomeo Pinelli
Name: Woman of Frascati and a Hermit
Date of creation: 1816
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

The composition is known in three variants. The first was performed for the album Raccolta di Cinquanta Costumi Pittoreschi incisi di acqua forte (Collection of Fifty Picturesque Costumes), published in 1809 in Rome. The next version, similar to the so-called Lviv one, was posted in the album Nuova Raccolta di Cinquanta Costumi Pittoreschi (New Collection of Fifty Picturesque Costumes) published by Giovanni Scudellari in Rome in 1817. One more version of this composition is known since 1815, in which a boy was depicted instead of a girl. All known versions differ from the Lviv one because they are not painted with watercolours. In the foreground, in the centre, one can see three figures. A woman in typical festive clothing of southern Italy is depicted with her daughter carrying the Easter cakes in their baskets to the church. They stopped at a hermit sitting near the monastery gate, and the woman gave him alms. The grey-bearded Capuchin hermit and the woman look warmly into each other's eyes, though the girl is a little excited, looking closely at the hermit and holding her mother's skirt. The action takes place in a winding street in the suburbs of Rome, in the town of Frascati, where the media areas are surrounded by high stone walls, behind which one can see the greenery of trees and grapes. The artist used the deep blue colour depicting a woman's festive waistcoat, a girl's skirt, a cross over a bowl for washing hands in front of the gate doorway, and a niche in an aedicule over another gate in the background on the left. The artist highlighted the figure of the Capuchin brother in a rich brown colour. The hermit is the main character of the work. In contrast to the first version of 1809, where the hermit is depicted as a young man, B. Pinelli created a psychological image of an older and wiser man in this work.

Inscriptions

In the lower left corner, there is the author's signature Pinelli written in italics, the date – 1816, and the place of performance – Roma. In the centre of the engraving, under the image, is the work's title Donna di Frascati, ed un Eremita. The number "29" is in the upper right corner above the plate.

Legal regulation

Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery

Woman of Frascati and a Hermit

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