Giacomo Francesco CIPPER, known as IL TODESCHINI (Feldkirch - Lot 60

Giacomo Francesco CIPPER, known as IL TODESCHINI (Feldkirch 1664 - 1736 Milan) The young spaghetti eater Oil on canvas 68 x 55 cm (Overlay, restorations) Related work : - Giacomo Francesco Cipper, The Young Spaghetti Eater, 73 x 59 cm, Chambéry, Musée des beaux-arts, inv. unknown (purchased 2021) Our mischievous Young Spaghetti Eater is a powerful testament to Cipper's realist painting, and follows in the footsteps of such popular icons as Campi's Ricotta Eaters (1580, Lyon, Musée des Beaux-Arts, inv. H673), Carracci's Bean Eater Carracci (Rome, Palazzo Colonna, inv. unknown), or Murillo's Melon and Grape Eater (Munich, Alte Pinakothek, inv. 605). Giacomo Francesco Cipper, known as "Il Todeschini" (1664-1736), a painter of Austrian origin (hence his nickname "the German"), settled in Milan in Milan in 1696. Like others before him, Cipper set out to paint the everyday reality of humble people. In his constant quest for the truth, he captured the seemingly insignificant scenes that punctuate their lives of toil, their rare moments of relaxation (Drinker, Card Players, etc.) or the little events of everyday life (the brawl, the Bohemian dentist's intervention...). But more than the themes addressed, it's the way they're treated that makes Cipper's work so original. With their life-size figures, their mimicry that sometimes gives them the appearance of caricatures, and the way they take the spectator as witness, as in theater or farce, these men and women reveal Cipper's humane view of them. With our Young Spaghetti Eater, he formulated his response to Luca Giordano, who, a generation before him, had produced his Pasta Eater, Allegory of Taste, circa 1660 (Princeton University Gallery, inv. y1985-35). Our young gourmand grabs his meal with both hands, looks at the viewer with hilarity, and smiles at us with a spontaneous, unconventional smile: an allegory of taste, youth, joy and simplicity. A subject that must have found its audience, since Cipper (or a pupil?) produced another version in which the child wears an ochre frock coat, acquired in 2021 by the Musée de Chambéry (see "Related works").