Peasant with basin

Description

"The serenissimo Padrone wants Domenico Pieratti sculptor to make the stone figures that go around the Vivaio dell'Isola in the niches of cypresses et ogni volta che ha fatto qualcuna, VS fare le istimare et accomodare." (ASFI, Scrittoio delle Regie Possessioni, f. 2524 in Capecchi 2008, p. 170). On January 10, 1646, Ferdinand II commissioned Domenico Pieratti to make statues of "Arcadian subject matter" to be placed around the Island nursery. The first work that Pieratti made for the Isola Basin was a statue depicting a Hunter; in 1647 Pieratt i executed a work depicting a "Hunter with harquebus," which Gabriele Capecchi recognized in the sculpture of the "Peasant with Basin" from the peculiar position of the arms; originally the sculpture held a rifle. The "Peasant with Basin" underwent restoration work in the second half of the eighteenth century that changed its original iconography. The work appeared in its present form in 1788 in Gaetano Vascellini's "Statues of Florence"; the sculpture was identified by Vascellini as "Crepuscolo" (Vascellini, 1788, no. 18b). Earlier critics had attributed, on stylistic grounds, the "Young Man with a Basin" to Giovan Simone Cioli, placing the making of the work between 1593 and 1616