Peasant with spade

Description

Baldinucci recalls in the lives of Valerio and Giovan Simone Cioli "mediocre sculptor" a documentary record from 1599, in which the former went to Carrara to look for four blocks of marble intended for two dwarfs and two peasants, of which this one spades, sculptures finished by Giovan Simone in 1605 . The news was found and transcribed by Pope Hennessy. It is a letter from Cioli himself to Grand Duke Ferdinand dated July 31, 1599, together with documents proving the final intervention of his nephew, in which contrary to Baldinucci's claim there is no explicit mention of this peasant. The hypothesis was accepted from eighteenth-century sources to the most" recent ones. Stylistically, no notation to the contrary is possible. As in his other production, Cioli filters into a composed language of classical reference, especially in the head that accompanies the movement of the foot, the naturalistic and everyday vein of the theme, found not only in these garden figures, as much as in the coeval painting of Poccetti and Empoli.