The Bamboccianti were genre painters active in Rome from about 1625 until the end of the seventeenth century. Most were Dutch

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

 and Flemish artists who brought existing traditions of depicting peasant subjects from sixteenth-century Netherlandish art

Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting

Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting represents the 16th century response to Italian Renaissance art in the Low Countries. These artists, who span from the Antwerp Mannerists and Hieronymus Bosch at the start of the century to the late Northern Mannerists such as Hendrik Goltzius and Joachim...

 with them to Italy, and generally created small cabinet painting

Cabinet painting

A cabinet painting is a small painting, typically no larger than about two feet in either dimension, but often much smaller. The term is especially used of paintings that show full-length figures at a small scale, as opposed to say a head painted nearly life-size, and that are painted very...

s or etching

Etching

Etching is the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio in the metal...

s of the everyday life

Everyday Life

Everyday Life is the first solo album made by Life MC of the British Hip Hop group Phi Life Cypher....

 of the lower classes in Rome and its countryside. Many of the artists were also members of the Bentvueghels

Bentvueghels

The Bentvueghels were a society of mostly Dutch and Flemish artists active in Rome from about 1620 to 1720. They are also known as the Schildersbent .-Activities:...

. Their paintings have been traditionally interpreted as a realist

Realism (visual arts)

Realism in the visual arts is a style that depicts the actuality of what the eyes can see. The term is used in different senses in art history; it may mean the same as illusionism, the representation of subjects with visual mimesis or verisimilitude, or may mean an emphasis on the actuality of...

 "true portrait of Rome and its popular life" "without variation or alteration" of what the artist sees. Typical subjects include food and beverage sellers, farmers and milkmaids at work, soldiers at rest and play, and beggars, or, as Salvator Rosa

Salvator Rosa

Salvator Rosa was an Italian Baroque painter, poet and printmaker, active in Naples, Rome and Florence. As a painter, he is best known as an "unorthodox and extravagant" and a "perpetual rebel" proto-Romantic.-Early life:...

 lamented in the mid-seventeenth century, "rougues, cheats, pickpockets, bands of drunks and gluttons, scubby tobacconists, barbers, and other 'sordid' subjects." In contrast to their painted topics, the works themselves sold for high prices to esteemed collectors.

As Karel Dujardins' genre subject of peasants and mountebanks demonstrates, such realistic groupings might be set in idealized settings of noble ruins of the Roman Campagna.

Artists

The term originates from the Bentvueghel nickname of the Dutch

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

 painter Pieter van Laer

Pieter van Laer

Pieter van Laer was a Dutch Golden Age painter of genre scenes, active for over a decade in Rome, where his nickname was Il Bamboccio...

, "Il Bamboccio", around whom these artists gathered during his stay in Italy (1625–1639). The artist's alias, which means "ugly doll" or "puppet

Puppet

A puppet is an inanimate object or representational figure animated or manipulated by an entertainer, who is called a puppeteer. It is used in puppetry, a play or a presentation that is a very ancient form of theatre....

", alludes to van Laer's physical proportions, as well as the puppet size of his figures. The initial bamboccianti included Andries

Andries Both

Andries Both , was a Dutch Golden Age genre painter, one of the bamboccianti, and brother of Jan Dirksz Both.Both was born in Utrecht, the son of a glass painter. He studied under Abraham Bloemaert. According to Joachim von Sandrart Andries and his brother Jan cooperated on the paintings, with Jan...

 and Jan Both, Karel Dujardin

Karel Dujardin

Karel Dujardin was a Dutch painter.-Biography:Karel Dujardin was a Dutch painter and etcher, born in Amsterdam in 1622. Although active as a portrait and history painter, he is best known for his Italianate landscapes. Typical of his landscape paintings is Farm Animals in the Shade of a Tree...

, Jan Miel

Jan Miel

Jan Miel was a Flemish painter, active in Italy, emerging from the circle of genre painters influenced by Pieter van Laer and the so-called Bamboccianti painters. He was born in Beveren-Waas near Antwerp, but had traveled to Rome by 1636. Surprisingly, he briefly collaborating with Andrea Sacchi,...

, Johannes Lingelbach

Johannes Lingelbach

Johannes Lingelbach or Johann, , was a Dutch Golden Age painter, associated with the second generation of Bambocciate, a group of genre painters working in Rome from 1625 - 1700.-Biography:...

 and the Italian Michelangelo Cerquozzi

Michelangelo Cerquozzi

Michelangelo Cerquozzi was an Italian Baroque painter.Born and active mainly in Rome, he is best known for small canvases of genre scenes, and for being one of the Italian proponents of the Bamboccianti style practised by a Dutch painter in Rome, Pieter van Laer...

. Sébastien Bourdon

Sébastien Bourdon

Sébastien Bourdon was a French painter and engraver. His chef d'œuvre is The Crucifixion of St. Peter made for the cathedral of Notre Dame....

 is also associated with this group during his early career. Other Bamboccianti include Michiel Sweerts

Michiel Sweerts

Michiel Sweerts , also known as Michael Sweerts, was a Flemish painter of the Baroque period, active in Rome in the style of the Bamboccianti...

, Thomas Wijck

Thomas Wijck

Thomas Wijck was a Dutch painter, a member of Dutch family of painters and draughtsmen.-Biography:Wijck was a pupil of his father...

, Dirck Helmbreker

Dirck Helmbreker

Dirck Helmbreker, Theodor Helmbreeker, or Teodoro Elembrech was a Dutch Golden Age painter of Italianate landscapes.-Biography:...

, Jan Asselyn, Anton Goubou, Willem Reuter, and Jacob van Staveren. They were to influence Rococo

Rococo

Rococo , also referred to as "Late Baroque", is an 18th-century style which developed as Baroque artists gave up their symmetry and became increasingly ornate, florid, and playful...

 artists such as Antonio Cifrondi

Antonio Cifrondi

Antonio Cifrondi was an Italian painter of the late Baroque, mainly of genre themes. He was active in Brescia and near Bergamo....

, Pietro Longhi

Pietro Longhi

Pietro Longhi was a Venetian painter of contemporary scenes of life.-Biography:Pietro Longhi was born in Venice in the parish of Saint Maria, first child of the silversmith Alessandro Falca and his wife, Antonia. He adopted the Longhi last name when he began to paint...

, Giuseppe Maria Crespi, Giacomo Ceruti

Giacomo Ceruti

Giacomo Antonio Melchiorre Ceruti was an Italian late Baroque painter, active in Northern Italy in Milan, Brescia, and Venice. He acquired the nickname Pitocchetto for his many paintings of peasants dressed in rags.He was born in Milan, but worked primarily in Brescia...

, and Alessandro Magnasco

Alessandro Magnasco

Alessandro Magnasco , also known as il Lissandrino, was an Italian late-Baroque painter active mostly in Milan and Genoa...

, and their paintings of everyday Roman life continued into the nineteenth century through the works of Bartolomeo

Bartolomeo Pinelli

Bartolomeo Pinelli was an Italian illustrator and engraver.-Life:Pinelli was born and died in Rome, the son of a religious statues modeler. Pinelli was educated first in Bologna and then at the Accademia di San Luca in Rome. He lived in a poor quarter of Rome...

 and Achille Pinelli

Achille Pinelli

Achille Pinelli was an Italian painter. Born in Rome, he was the son of the painter Bartolomeo Pinelli and his wife Mariangela Gatti....

, Andrea Locatelli

Andrea Locatelli

Andrea Locatelli was an Italian painter of landscapes .Born in Rome, he was the son and pupil of the painter Piero Locatelli, who had studied with the Florentine Ciro Ferri...

 and Paolo Monaldi. A Bambocciante not yet identified painted also Assalto d'armati, a fighting image, now in the Forlì

Forlì

Forlì is a comune and city in Emilia-Romagna, Italy, and is the capital of the province of Forlì-Cesena. The city is situated along the Via Emilia, to the right of the Montone river, and is an important agricultural centre...

 "Pinacoteca Civica" (City Art Gallery).

Characteristics

Giambattista Passeri, a seventeenth-century chronicler of art, described van Laer's work as an "open window" that provides an accurate representation of the world around him, characteristics applied to the bamboccianti in general:

"era singular nel represetar la veritá schietta, e pura nell'esser suo, che li suoi quadri parevano una finestra aperta pe le quale fussero veduti quelli suoi successi; senza alcun divario, et alterazione."

"[he] was unique in representing the truth, in its pure essence, such that his paintings appear to us like an open window through which we can see all that happens, without divergence or alteration"

Critical reception

Although the bamboccianti found success with their pictures, artistic theoreticians and academics in Rome were often unkind—paintings of everyday life generally being regarded lowly within the hierarchy of genres

Hierarchy of genres

A hierarchy of genres is any formalization which ranks different genres in an art form in terms of their prestige and cultural value....

. The fact that otherwise well-learned and aristocratic patrons continued to purchase works by these artists was frequently bemoaned by painters of histories

History painting

History painting is a genre in painting defined by subject matter rather than an artistic style, depicting a moment in a narrative story, rather than a static subject such as a portrait...

 and other genres within the accepted canon of the city's main artistic establishment, Academy of St. Luke. For example, Salvator Rosa

Salvator Rosa

Salvator Rosa was an Italian Baroque painter, poet and printmaker, active in Naples, Rome and Florence. As a painter, he is best known as an "unorthodox and extravagant" and a "perpetual rebel" proto-Romantic.-Early life:...

, in his satire on painting Pittura (c. 1650), complains bitterly about the taste of the aristocratic patrons and their acceptance of such everyday subjects:

"Quel che aboriscon vivo, aman dipinto."

"Those they abhor in life, are loved in paint"

More often than not, as is reflected in Rosa's comment, such derision was directed not at the artists, but towards those who actually bought the works. The artists themselves were often admired, with van Laer being known as an artist whose works were pricey and Michelangelo Cerquozzi gaining access to aristocratic circles and befriending artists such as Pietro da Cortona

Pietro da Cortona

Pietro da Cortona, by the name of Pietro Berrettini, born Pietro Berrettini da Cortona, was the leading Italian Baroque painter of his time and also one of the key architects in the emergence of Roman Baroque architecture. He was also an important decorator...

. Additionally, since many of the bamboccianti were foreigners painting outside of the Academy's interests they often joined the Schildersbent, a loosely organized guild—known primarily for its lavish and drunken festivities—that providing representation and acted as an alternative to the official establishment. Acceptance of the bamboccianti in the Academy was not forbidden, however, as Van Laer and Cerquozzi are associated with both (van Laer was also a member of the Schildersbent).

Sources

• Brigstocke, Hugh. "Bourdon, Sébastien", Grove Art Online. Oxford University Press, [October 30, 2007].