Piety

Kruseman signed this canvas 'C. Kruseman F. Roma'. He painted it in Rome in 1823, two years into his first stay in Italy. A family prays at a small shrine to the Virgin fixed to a tree beside a woodland road. In the middle an old woman kneels with a rosary in her folded hands, a young woman and a little girl are at the left, and at the right stand an old man and a boy holding his hat. The picture mixes two traditions. The two old people are painted with plain Dutch realism, while the young ones are idealised Italian peasant types. The little Madonna in the shrine is an exact copy of a painting by Raphael, the Renaissance master Kruseman admired most. The state bought the canvas in 1824, a year after it was painted. Low on the left, easy to miss, two butterflies have settled on a plant.