Figures in an interior around a lantern

Pietro Paolini was a key exponent of Tuscan Caravaggism, developing a highly idiosyncratic body of work that singled him out as a leading figure in the Lucchese school. Details of his early life are scarce, though he is known to have trained in Rome with Angelo Caroselli. Baldinucci describes him as a ‘pittore di gran bizzarria, e di nobile invenzione’ (F. Baldinucci, Notizie dei Professori del Disegno da Cimabue in qua, Florence, 1728, p. 365). That sentiment is borne out in this remarkable, and apparently unrecorded, composition. It is as complex as it is intriguing: behind a drawn red curtain, figures are arranged around a wooden window frame, the scene lit by a hanging candle. The man in armour seems to proposition the young, seated woman, who gestures to a girl in front of the window. To the right, an old woman stares at the young man; a very similar profile portrait appears in other pictures by Paolini, including Achilles and the daughters of Lycomedes, in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu and the Allegory of Death in the Museo Cerralbo, Madrid. The bearded man in the shadows stage left looks out at the viewer; perhaps it might be a self-portrait.

We are grateful to Dr Marco Ciampolini for confirming the attribution on the basis of a photograph.