GASPARE TRAVERSI
(Naples, ca. 1722 – 1770 Rome)

The Monk, the Maiden, and the Novice

Oil on canvas
24 ⅜ x 29 ⅛ inches (62 x 74 cm)
 

Provenance:

Bence Collection, Uruguay, by the 1920s; thence by descent until 2015

Gaspare Traversi was one of most original and eccentric painters in eighteenth-century Naples. His secular paintings are extraordinary depictions of Italian society, treating all classes, seen through the ironic and at times acerbic eye of a master storyteller. Scenes from everyday life are transformed into high drama in paintings that can be at once moralistic, tragic, tender, or comical. The present work is a newly discovered painting by the artist that has survived in exceptional condition and in its original frame.

Traversi’s distinctive style was shaped by the influence of Francesco Solimena and Giuseppe Bonito, to whom he was apprenticed around 1730. While his earliest documented paintings were religious commissions dating from 1749, Traversi had already begun producing his signature genre paintings by the late 1730s. These works depicted scenes of everyday life populated by the local rich and emerging middle-class, as well by the humble, derelict, and socially marginalized populace. While Traversi portrayed the bourgeois in costumes and with the manners of the aristocracy— almost always with a satirical, humorous, or moralizing intent—paintings of common folk, such as the present work, show their subjects benevolently and sympathetically. 

The three protagonists in our painting form an intriguing and dramatic triangle. A bearded Capuchin monk is shown lecturing a beautiful maiden as she tentatively holds, and he forcefully points to, a small painting of the Madonna and Child of a type known as the Madonna delle Grazie (Our Lady of Graces)—a venerated popular devotional image (Fig. 1). We are clearly witnessing a lesson in moral behavior as the girl contritely bows her head and modestly covers her bodice with a shawl. At the left a young novice shyly peers out at the viewer, a look of guilt on his face. We are left to provide the backstory to this intimate scene, but the exchange and avoidance of glances among the figures suggests that whatever transgression the maiden has committed, she had done so with the complicity of the boy. The monk is perhaps attempting to persuade her to seek redemption for her sins, possibly that of prostitution, to which she may have been driven by the pressures of poverty. Whether or not it was inspired by an incident witnessed by the artist, the scene undoubtedly reflects the realities of everyday life in the impoverished neighborhoods of mid-eighteenth-century Naples and Rome—particularly the port zone (Borgo Vergini) and the Rione Sanità in Naples, as well as the quarter of Trastevere in Rome.

While the figures are compressed into an intricate and tight composition, dramatic lighting focuses attention on the expressive faces of the monk and the maiden, while the shrinking novice looms in the shadows behind, clutching his cloak. The soft pastel colors of the young woman’s elegant dress and her translucent skin contrast sharply with the earth tones of the monk’s distinctive brown habit and reddened face. Her place in the composition, seated in profile facing to the left along the right edge of the frame, is repeated in several of Traversi’s works.[i] And her delicate features were likely based on a model who posed regularly for the artist—she is found in several of his works, including the Spinet Player (Private Collection) and the Detected Love Letter (Ringling Museum, Sarasota).[ii]

The attribution of this painting to Gaspare Traversi has been confirmed on firsthand inspection by Dr. Nicola Spinosa, to whom we are grateful for his observations on this work.[iii] Spinosa writes of this painting: “By its style and forceful naturalism, the present canvas is without question a work by the Neapolitan painter Gaspare Traversi . . . It belongs to a series of paintings from the years 1747–1752 depicting scenes of seduction, marriage contracts, popular games and the like, in which Traversi captures and records diverse aspects of contemporary society, but with a subtle critical eye, an ethical rigor, and with a visual intensity not found in the earlier treatments of similar subjects by his teacher Giuseppe Bonito.” He dates our canvas to around 1750, just prior to the artist’s move from Naples to Rome. Spinosa notes that Traversi’s departure from his native city was motivated in part by the fact that his genre paintings—presenting direct and often biting caricatures of both the masses and the elite—were not well received by Neapolitan patrons, often the objects of his satire.

By 1752, Traversi was in Rome and had settled in the Trastevere quarter, one of the city’s most impoverished neighborhoods, where he received the support of the Capuchin friars for whom he had already completed several projects in Naples. Among these were commissions for Capuchin churches,[iv] as well as portraits for celebrated members of the order.[v] Capuchin monks were also among the regular cast of characters that Traversi depicted in his genre paintings, as in the present work. A canvas now in the collection of the Cassa di Risparmio of Pesaro similarly depicts an elderly monk accompanied by a novice, who bears a striking resemblance to his counterpart in our painting (Fig. 2).[vi] While the work in the Cassa di Risparmio is an uncritical presentation of the figures begging for alms, the present work reveals Traversi’s willingness to make his patrons and their brethren the subject of his visual critique. Our painting is seemingly a winking comment on the licentiousness of young novitiates, or their general lack of obedience to the strict rules imposed by their Order.

[i] For example, the Card Players in a Private Collection. See: Nicola Spinosa and Tiziana Scarpa, in Gaspare Traversi: Napoletani del ‘700 tra miseria e nobiltà, exh. cat., Naples, 2003, p. 234, cat. no. R60.

[ii] Spinosa and Scarpa, in Gaspare Traversi, p. 235, cat. no. R65; and p. 246, cat. no. R123.

[iii] A catalogue entry on our portrait authored by Dr. Spinosa (dated 31 July 2016) is available upon request.

[iv] For example, see the painting now in the Basilica of San Paolo fuori le Mure in Rome, transferred from a Capuchin church in Trastevere. Additionally, in 1753 Padre Raffaello Rossi da Lugagnano, the Vicar and later General Minister of the Order, commissioned from Traversi the sizeable and important cycle of religious canvases painted for the Collegiata of Castell’Arquato near Parma (today divided between the Cathedral and Church of San Pietro d’Alcantara in Parma, the Museum of the Collegiata di Castell’Arquato, and the Church of San Rocco in Borgo Val di Taro). See: Spinosa and Scarpa, in Gaspare Traversi, p. 232, cat. nos. R51-R54; and pp. 237-239, cat. nos. R83-89.

[v] These include the portraits of Padre Gaetano Politi da Laurino (formerly art market, Milan), Padre Gherardo degli Angeli (Private Collection), and Padre Rossi (formerly Federico Zeri Collection, Mentana). See: Spinosa and Scarpa, in Gaspare Traversi, p. 227, cat. no. R21; p. 227, cat. no. R22; and p. 233, cat. no. R55.

[vi] Spinosa and Scarpa, in Gaspare Traversi, p. 229, cat. no. R34.