Lot 212: Faustino Bocchi (Brescia 1659-1741)

Dwarves in a landscape
signed (?) indistinctly (lower right)
oil on canvas
29 1/8 x 38 1/4 in. (74 x 97 cm.)

[Possibly] Brussels, Musée de Beaux-Arts, until 1929.

P. Bautier, 'Faustino Bocchi peintre de nains', Revue belge d'archeologie et d'historire de l'art, XXVIII, 1957, p. 208, fig. 3.
M.A. Baroncelli, 'Faustino Bocchi, Enrico Albricci pittori di Bambocciate', Commentari dell'Ateneo di Brescia, 1965, p. 107, no. 23.
M. Olivari, Faustino Bocchi e l'arte di figurar pigmei, Milan, 1990, p. 73, no. A 40, illustrated.

Anonymous sale; Galerie George Giroux, Brussels, 11 March 1929, lot 17. with Léon Seyffers, Brussels.

According to Lanzi, Bocchi was a pupil of Angelo Everardi, called Fiamminghino, which would account for his clear knowledge of Flemish 'low-life' painting, visible, for example, in the way in which his subjects recall those of Hieronimus Bosch. The artist probably knew the work of Bosch from the engravings after his compositions which were popular in the seventeenth century. Another source for his satirical depictions of dwarves were the engravings by Jacques Callot, the caricature drawings of his Florentine predecessor, Baccio del Bianco, and perhaps also through Pier Leone Ghezzi, who was an exact contemporary in Rome. However, Bocchi developed a highly personal genre, whose originality is illustrated by the fact that it predates Swift's famous book Gulliver's Travels. When it was first published in 1726 the artist was already sixty-seven, however he soon learned about the stories of the Lilliputians, several of which he depicted.

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