Pieter van Laer

In the Rome of the 1620s and 30s, a Dutch painter from Haarlem became famous less for his face than for his shape. Fellow artists called him 'Il Bamboccio', roughly 'the rag doll', because of a misshapen body with unusually long legs and almost no neck. The name stuck to Pieter van Laer, and then to a whole kind of painting.

While Roman studios turned out saints, gods and heroes, van Laer painted the street. Market sellers, beggars, muleteers, drinkers outside an inn, work and idleness among the ordinary people of the city. He was the first to specialise in it, and collectors wanted these small, low-life scenes. Imitators followed in such numbers that they earned a group name, the Bamboccianti, and their pictures were called bambocciate.

He was also one of the leaders of the Bentvueghels, the rowdy fraternity the Netherlandish artists ran in Rome to look after their own. Around 1638 he went home to Haarlem. The story goes that he set out for Rome again in 1642 and was never heard of again. He was about 42, and how and where he died is not known.