Peasant woman with dogs

Description

The work depicts a young woman, probably a peasant woman, with her face stretched upward. The woman, with her right hand holds a hat and with her left hand holds a fruit. The peasant woman is wearing a short jacket and a calf-length skirt; to her right, near her feet, are two small dogs. Ferdinand II entrusted Domenico Pieratti in 1646 with the creation of some sculptures in pietra serena of "Arcadian subject matter," which were to be placed in the "cypress niches" around the nursery on the Island . The theoretical basis for this setting is taken from "The Garden of a King," a text by Agostino Del Riccio . The first sculpture that Pieratti made for the Isola Basin was a statue depicting a "Hunter," the cycle was completed in 1652 with the "Hunter with a Hare on his Shoulder" ; to this group of sculptures surely also belonged "The Woman with Dogs" . For Gabriele Capecchi, the sculpture would seem to derive from a subject by Stradano, identifiable in an engraving by Galle relating to "Hunting with the Falcon"