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Seller of Antrite Nuts in Naples

Bartolomeo Pinelli

Basic information

ID: Г-IV-1749
Author: Bartolomeo Pinelli
Name: Seller of Antrite Nuts in Naples
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 work is from the Neapolitan series. The first known version of the engraving was dated 1814. The composition that is similar to the Lviv one but presented in a square frame is known from the album Raccolta di Cinquanta Costumi li più interresanti delle città, terre e paesi in provinci diverse del Regno di Napoli (Collection of Fifty Most Interesting Picturesque Costumes from Cities, Towns and Villages of Different Provinces of the Kingdom of Naples) published in Rome in 1814 (engravings were reissued in rectangular frames in the Roman editions of the album in 1816 and 1817). In the foreground, in the centre, one can see a salesman, a long-haired young man. He is cutting a branch from a cluster of nuts hanging from a twig on a high stick for the girl with a wide knife. The young man wears an orange jacket, yellow knee-length trousers, and white stockings. Black shoes with overlays are on his feet, a black hat is on his head, and a purse is on his belt. A girl with her hand stretched out to the nuts is depicted right next to him. She is dressed in a Neapolitan yellow and blue vest and crimson skirt. There are sandals on her feet. On the left, there is a young man, the girl's companion, sitting barefoot on the ground and watching what is happening. He wears a red vest over a white shirt and short blue trousers. In the background, on the left, there is a basilica-type temple with a dome and a tower behind a row of trees with spreading crowns. In the distance, there is the blue peak of Vesuvius. The young man might be selling hazelnuts, which have been cultivated in Campania since Roman times but became widely spread only during the reign of the Bourbons in the 18th–19th centuries.

Inscriptions

In the lower left corner, there is the author's signature Pinelli fe [fecit] written in italics and date – 1816. In the centre of the engraving, under the image, is the work's title: Venditore di Nocchie, dette Antrite, in Napoli. The number "40" is in the upper right corner above the plate.

Legal regulation

Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery

Seller of Antrite Nuts in Naples

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