Focus on this artwork and explain the History.
This is one of the painter's last works, and one of the most bitter. The contrast of light and shade gave him pleasure. He studied the composition of the Renaissance painters in Italy, and perhaps also the work of Flemish artists, but in spite of all that, he clung to the profoundly Spanish tradition of realism, even after having spent nearly all his life in Italy.Moved by a Christian awareness of human weakness, Spanish artists often painted pictures of the poor and disabled. Here the young Neapolitan vagabond seems to be making game of his own infirmity; he is also careful to inform us, by means of the scrap of writing he holds, that he is dumb as well as crippled, because he appeals to the charity of the passer-by with that card written in Latin.The motif is surely a derivation of taste for scenes of low life in art, as instituted by Caravaggio and followed by Ribera, who was in Naples his most fervent admirer in the realist vein.
Naples Latin Renaissance painters Spanish Caravaggio realism Italy Flemish Christian