Giovanni Battista Piazzetta (Italian, 1682–1754)
Pastoral Scene
INV-2333
Giovanni Battista Piazzetta (Italian, 1682–1754)1740
Pastoral Scene
Giovanni Battista Piazzetta (Italian, 1682–1754) →Realism18th Centuryoil on canvaspaint
Date
1740
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
191.8 × 143 cm (75 1/2 × 56 1/4 in.); Framed: 208.3 × 158.8 × 10.2 cm (82 × 62 1/2 × 4 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection
One of Venice’s leading painters, Giovanni Battista Piazzetta transformed the gritty realism and dramatic light effects of earlier Baroque painting into his own poetic style. This is one of two paintings of life-size, rustic figures that Piazetta made for his patron, Field Marshall Johann Matthias von der Schulenberg. Their meaning remains mysterious. The half-naked boy holding a basket of grapes has been interpreted as the infant Bacchus, the god of wine, although Piazzetta made no reference in his description of the work to a symbolic meaning. The artist was probably responding to his patron’s taste for pastoral scenes, a genre that appealed to middle- and upper-class city dwellers for its idealized views of rural life.
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