Pygmies fighting over a skull

According to Lanzi, Bocchi was a pupil of Angelo Everardi, called Fiamminghino, which would account for his clear knowledge of Flemish 'low-life' painting visible, for example, in the way in which his subjects recall those of Hieronimus Bosch. The artist probably knew the work of Bosch from the engravings after his compositions, which were enormously popular in the seventeenth century. Another source for his satirical depictions of dwarves were the engravings by Jacques Callot, the caricature drawings of his Florentine predecessor, Baccio del Bianco, and perhaps also through Pier Leone Ghezzi, who was an exact contemporary in Rome. However, Bocchi developed a highly personal genre, whose originality is illustrated by the fact that it predates Swift's famous book Gulliver's Travels. When it was first published in 1726 the artist was already sixty-seven, however he soon learned about the stories of the Lilliputians, several of which he depicted.

Although the inscription on the scroll the painter holds in the lower right of the picture is only partly legible, there is a clear reference to the 'bizarre' minds in the heads of painters and poets one of whose skulls is being fought over in the picture.

We are grateful to Mariolina Olivari for confirming the attribution of this hitherto unpublished picture, on the basis of a photograph.