Errand Boy Seated with a Basket on His Back, Eggs and Poultry

A guidebook to Brescia printed in 1760 records two paintings of market porters hanging in the Barbisoni house. They are almost certainly this canvas and its companion. Some time afterwards the pair was broken up and the two pictures were sold separately. This one surfaced in 1962 with the Milanese dealer Alessandro Orsi and was bought straight away by the writer Giovanni Testori. The other went to the collector Gilberto Algranti in 1966. In 1969 the two owners gave them to Brera together, and they have hung as a pair ever since. The boy here has a wicker basket strapped across his back, a smaller basket of white eggs on one arm and live poultry in his lap. The two canvases are not quite the same size, 95 centimetres wide against 95.5.