The Beaneater

The subject
This painting represents a magnificent example of ‘genre painting’. This term, introduced for the first time by Giovanni Pietro Bellori, refers to a painting inspired by daily domestic life, which displays simple and common reality as opposed to idealistic and historical painting. Portraits of ordinary people were considered a turning point in European art in view of their ability to unite the realism of the pauperism style introduced by Caravaggio with the focus on daily life of Flemish artists, where genre painting had been established since the previous century.

The painting
This work is a smaller version of a more famous piece, an original work by Annibale Carracci, today preserved in Rome’s Galleria Colonna. The features, style and composition mimic those in the more famous version thus enabling us to place the work within the Caraccis’ circle. Luigi Salerno’s studies revealed that this work was completed by the same Bolognese master and not someone in his circle, as was originally believed. Regardless of its very high quality, this painting may have been created as a preparatory work.