A Scene from the Commedia dell'Arte

The present picture corresponds closely with a picture of the same subject, attributed to a 'Franco-Flemish Artist', in the John and Mable Ringling Museum, Sarasota. In the latter picture, less of the figure at the right edge is shown, and the curtains are less well-defined than in the present picture. Despite much discussion, no firm attribution has been made for the composition although the Ringling Museum catalogue suggests that the painter may have been 'a Fleming in the circle of Hieronymus Francken, who settled in Paris in 1566, or, more likely Ambroise Dubois who came to Fountainebleau from Antwerp in 1573'. The figure of the gypsy on the right is closely related to a figure in a drawing of The Finding of Moses by Nicoló dell'Abate in the Louvre, (see S. Béguin, il cinquecento francese, Milan, 1970, p. 72, fig. 24). The subject of the present picture is a stock scene from the Commedia dell'Arte, with Pantaloon having his pockets picked by a gypsy fortune teller, who pretends to read his palm, while another plays with his false beard. They are identified as prostitutes by the presence on the left of an old procuress carrying a child.

The Swiss surgeon Otto Lanz (1865-1935) was the most significant collector of Italian art living in the Netherlands in the early 20th, importing a vast amount of Italian art into the Netherlands, and thereby encouraging interest in a field neglected by Dutch collectors of the time.

The first tangible result of his prolific collecting was the installation in 1906 of a room in the Rijksmuseum with objects from his collection. Perhaps the climax of his career as collector came with the large exhibition of Italian art in Dutch collections held in the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam in 1934, to which he contributed 122 paintings.

After his death, the collection was eventually dispersed, with many pictures being lent or given to Dutch museums.