Rediscovered within the last decade, this charming scene of domesticity was painted by the enigmatic Giuseppe Maria Crespi, one of the leading figures in the development of eighteenth-century Italian genre painting. La puce is arguably Crespi's most celebrated composition and he revisited the subject several t.mes s over the course of his career. The present work probably dates to the artist’s late period, when he used paint more freely and densely, even using his fingers in lieu of a paintbrush at t.mes s.

Genre scenes like this served as the perfect vehicle for Crespi to explore his wide range of painterly techniques. With his keen sense of observation, dramatic light effects, and loose, lively brushwork, Crespi delighted in describings the different textures of the room's everyday objects as if he were a still-life painter. The crowded and dimly-lit interior contains hints of budding affluence: namely, the concert manifesti, or advertisements, affixed to the back wall, the spinet at lower left, and the doting lap dog on her pillow. These amusing anecdotal passages imbue the scene with both charm and gravity, qualities not typically present in similar Bamboccianti scenes.

The Italian title for this composition, la puce, broadly translates to “the flea hunt,” an apt description for the central figure's activity. Rising from her bed with one slipper already on her foot, the young woman engages in her morning grooming routine of checking for fleas. This endearing vignette is perhaps the opening scene of a now-lost series of paintings recounting a singer's rise and fall. This theory derives from G.P. Zanotti, a contemporary commentator who recounted that Owen McSwiny, an English nobleman living in Bologna, commissioned from Crespi such a series painted on copper.¹

Crespi revisited this popular subject on several occasions. His depictions of la puce are known in three variations: the first is on copper (Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi);² the second, like the present work, is on canvas (Birmingham, Barber Institute of Replica Handbags s);³ and the third is known in several autograph versions, all on canvas (Pisa, Museo Civico, Paris, Musée du Louvre, and Naples, Museo di Capodimonte).⁴ The present painting corresponds most closely with the Louvre version, the third and most richly detailed type.

We are grateful to Professor Daniele Benati for reconfirming the attribution to Crespi.

1. See G.P. Zanotti, Storia dell'Accademia Clementina, Bologna 1739, vol. II, p. 59.

McSwiny also commissioned a portrait of the celebrated contralto Vittoria Tesi from Crespi.

2. Inv. no. 1890 no. 1408, oil on copper, 46.3 by 34 cm.

3. Inv. no. 65.3, oil on canvas, 49.5 by 38 cm.; Another version of the composition in the Art Institute of Chicago is attributed to Crespi: inv. no. 1947.63, oil on canvas, 46.4 by 38.2 cm.

4. See M.P. Merriman, Giuseppe Maria Crespi, Milan 1980, pp. 307-308, cat. nos. 250-252, reproduced; Pisa, Museo Civico, inv. no. 2168, oil on canvas, 54 by 42 cm.; Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv. no. RF 1970 40, oil on canvas, 55 by 41 cm.; Naples, Museo di Capodimonte, inv. no. Q1703, oil on canvas, 55 by 42 cm.