Giacomo Francesco Cipper is a genre painter born in Austrian city of Feldkirch in Vorarlberg province.
From early 1700s, he worked in Northern Italy, mainly in Bergamo, Brescia, and Milan.
There is no information on his education or teachers. In his works, Cipper combined Baroque traditions with features of New Realism. Specialists note obvious influence of “painters of reality” popular in Italy from the mid-17th to mid-18th century. They were distinguished by demonstrative distinctiveness of character types, strongly pronounced genre character of compositions, extensive use of everyday life motives, still-life elements, and real, non-idealized landscape.
“Painting of reality” resulted from development of Caravaggism naturalistic tendencies in terms of transition from epatage to seriousness of “grand style” and from spectacular dynamics to more composed and reflective artistic comprehension of daily life.
Cipper’s motifs represent a well-defined and stable set of subjects: card players, strolling musicians and cheapjacks, gypsies, tavern-goers. Many of them are handled by the painter with humor, often streetwise and straightforward, but not cruel, always imbued with sympathy for his characters. His interest for the underworld is quite typical for the Italian fine art of that time.
This painting attribution to Cipper was suggested in 1969 by State Hermitage employee Tamara Fomichyova. The reason for that was another canvas by this painter named Street Musicians. The old man’s figure practically duplicates the Street Musicians flute player. This painting can be seen in the Accademia Gallery of Venice.
The exhibited etude shows an elderly man with a distrustful sarcastic look from under a three cornered hat perched on the side of his head. The man’s position with his back practically turned on the audience is untypical for an individual portrait. He looks sideways over the shoulder. His waistcoat seam ripped open on the shoulder demonstrates the poetics of poverty typical of the ‘painters of reality’.
The image is absolutely independent, devoid of any attributes or compositional motivation. Amid Giacomo Francesco Cipper’s other works and paintings of his time at large, this piece is quite an original phenomenon.
Only Cipper’s canvas Woman by the Oven from the Dijon Museum of Fine Arts has some resemblance to this portrait.
From early 1700s, he worked in Northern Italy, mainly in Bergamo, Brescia, and Milan.
There is no information on his education or teachers. In his works, Cipper combined Baroque traditions with features of New Realism. Specialists note obvious influence of “painters of reality” popular in Italy from the mid-17th to mid-18th century. They were distinguished by demonstrative distinctiveness of character types, strongly pronounced genre character of compositions, extensive use of everyday life motives, still-life elements, and real, non-idealized landscape.
“Painting of reality” resulted from development of Caravaggism naturalistic tendencies in terms of transition from epatage to seriousness of “grand style” and from spectacular dynamics to more composed and reflective artistic comprehension of daily life.
Cipper’s motifs represent a well-defined and stable set of subjects: card players, strolling musicians and cheapjacks, gypsies, tavern-goers. Many of them are handled by the painter with humor, often streetwise and straightforward, but not cruel, always imbued with sympathy for his characters. His interest for the underworld is quite typical for the Italian fine art of that time.
This painting attribution to Cipper was suggested in 1969 by State Hermitage employee Tamara Fomichyova. The reason for that was another canvas by this painter named Street Musicians. The old man’s figure practically duplicates the Street Musicians flute player. This painting can be seen in the Accademia Gallery of Venice.
The exhibited etude shows an elderly man with a distrustful sarcastic look from under a three cornered hat perched on the side of his head. The man’s position with his back practically turned on the audience is untypical for an individual portrait. He looks sideways over the shoulder. His waistcoat seam ripped open on the shoulder demonstrates the poetics of poverty typical of the ‘painters of reality’.
The image is absolutely independent, devoid of any attributes or compositional motivation. Amid Giacomo Francesco Cipper’s other works and paintings of his time at large, this piece is quite an original phenomenon.
Only Cipper’s canvas Woman by the Oven from the Dijon Museum of Fine Arts has some resemblance to this portrait.
