An elegant children's tea-party in the forecourt of an Italian villa with a young man passing a joint of meat to a woman standing on a balcony above

Falciatore trained in the studio of Paolo de Matteis before working under Domenico Andrea Vaccaro, whose output was to influence the artist's early style. During the 1740s Falciatore gradually abandoned religious subject matter in favour of contemporary genre scenes and these were to prove his most successful and original inventions by which he is best known today.

Hitherto unrecorded, the present work is closely related to a pair of pictures that also measure 76 x 102 cm., one depicting Tarantella at Mergallina and the other a Concert in a Garden, both in the Detroit Institute of Arts (see N. Spinosa, in the catalogue of the exhibition Civiltà del '700 a Napoli 1734-1799, Naples, Museo di Capodimonte, 1979, pp. 240-41, nos. 120a & b). Another related scene of these dimensions was sold at Sotheby's, London, 4 December 1997, lot 236, suggesting that all might have originally belonged in one set, or at least were convceived by the artist at the same time. Spinosa, (loc.cit) suggested a date of circa 1750 for the Detroit pair and the same dating may be presumed for this picture.