The Picture Merchant

Scipione Pulzone, a portrait and altar painter in Rome, died in 1598, and some 70 years later his pictures were still being copied. Around 1670 a copy after one of his works is what the ragged man in this canvas by the Madrid painter José Antolínez holds out towards us. He is a picture dealer, in a torn jerkin, and we have caught him inside a painter's workshop. On the table at the left stand little bowls of colour and a stone for grinding pigment. At the lower right lie brushes and a small bottle of medium, and palettes, prints and drawings hang on the wall. The young man in the background may be the painter whose work is being sold, though the museum doubts that he is Antolínez himself. The canvas stands about two metres tall. Long known in English as The Picture Merchant, it was given to the Bavarian collections by a private owner in 1909, and the museum now calls it simply Studio Scene.