Man with a Monkey

Around 1590 in Bologna, most Italian painting was still busy with Mannerism, all elegant, artificial figures in complicated poses. This small canvas does the opposite. A Barbary ape, a tailless monkey brought up from North Africa, has climbed onto a young man and is tugging at his hair, and the man is caught mid-laugh. It is an ordinary, comic moment, painted straight from life, and that plainness was the whole point. Everyday people doing everyday things were rare in serious painting then, and this kind of scene pointed toward what Caravaggio would do in Rome a few years later. The naturalism is also why the picture is hard to pin down. It is usually given to Annibale Carracci, though its warm, almost Venetian colour has led some scholars to suggest other hands, and the attribution is not fully settled. A monkey like this was an exotic pet in wealthy Italian homes of the day, carried north through Mediterranean trade.