Michelangelo Cerquozzi

In the summer of 1647 the poor of Naples rose against their Spanish rulers, led for a few violent days by a young fisherman called Masaniello, before the revolt collapsed and its leader was killed. A year later, in Rome, Michelangelo Cerquozzi painted the uprising, crowds surging across the Piazza del Mercato with Masaniello on horseback at the centre.

The strange thing is that Cerquozzi was never in Naples during the revolt. Contemporaries knew it and marvelled that he could set down a live report of an event he had not witnessed, working from descriptions and his own eye for a crowd. That canvas, made with the architectural painter Viviano Codazzi, still hangs in the Galleria Spada in Rome.

Cerquozzi was a Roman, born in 1602, and a leading figure among the Bamboccianti, foreign and Italian artists who painted the everyday street life of Rome in small, plain cabinet pictures. He earned the nickname Michelangelo delle Battaglie, Michelangelo of the battles, for his crowded fight scenes, where he stripped out the glory and showed the scramble of men in combat. He also painted still lifes of fruit, a quieter sideline that sold well in Roman collections.