Le Geste Napolitain (The Neapolitan Gesture)

Artist Jean-Baptiste Greuze (French, 1725–1805)

Date1757

Mediumoil on canvas

Dimensionscanvas: 73 × 94.3 cm (28 3/4 × 37 1/8 in.)
framed: 92.1 × 113.7 × 8.9 cm (36 1/4 × 44 3/4 × 3 1/2 in.)

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineCharlotte E.W. Buffington Fund

Terms

Object number1964.113

Label TextIn the decades prior to the start of the French Revolution in 1789, Greuze’s genre scenes—paintings of everyday life populated with expressive figures and often bearing a moralizing tone—enchanted a wide range of collectors, from prominent Parisian collectors to Empress Catherine II of Russia. According to the signature, he painted this canvas in Rome in 1757, while traveling with his patron, the Abbé Louis Gougenot. The dramatic nature of the subject is characteristic of Greuze's narrative compositions, conveyed through theatrical gestures, highly expressive glances, and romantic staging. While the exact meaning of the depicted exchange has been lost to time, the young woman’s “Neapolitan” gesture of dismissal and the young man’s disguise as a peddler (only the viewer sees the medal of a nobleman, hidden from the women) suggest a moral about outward appearances.ProvenanceGiven by the artist to Abbé Gougenot, 1757; collection of Princes Nicolas and Anatole de Démidoff, by 1870; purchased by William, first Earl of Dudley, Démidoff sale, Paris, no. 108, February 26, 1870; Alberto Reyna, Caracas, Venezuela; acquired by French & Company, New York, NY, by 1964; purchased by the Worcester Art Museum, 1964.

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