Neapolitan School, 17th Century Peasant with hoe Oil on canvas, 86 x 69 cm With frame, 108 x 90 cm The realistic description, free from any idealization, of this man, probably a peasant as can be seen from the crumpled clothes he wears and equipped with a shovel or hoe, refers to a pictorial trend that began to develop in the 17th century, reaching its maximum expression in the following century. This was the tendency to represent, with great attention to the truth, the lowest social strata, from peasants to beggars, often depicted in their daily activities. Sometimes these subjects could be vehicles of allegorical meanings and sometimes, as in the case under examination, the artists did not fail to trace their psychological profile, weaving a relationship of emotional participation with the viewer. This pictorial trend originated from Michelangelo Merisi, known as Caravaggio, who, with a sacrilegious tone, used to insert the humblest people into the religious episode, depicted with an adherence to reality completely far from academic idealization. As is known, Caravaggio did not have a real school, but many artists were closely influenced by him. Among these, Jusepe de Ribera, also known as Lo Spagnoletto because of his origins, is remembered and the author of the painting in question may have looked to his works, which shows the subject in half-length and immersed in shadow. The Neapolitan matrix of the painting, fully confirmed by the particular emotional disintegration that permeates the canvas, alludes at the same time to the solutions of the so-called Master of the Annunciation to the Shepherds, active in the Neapolitan territory around the first half of the 17th century. The artist, who owes his name to the homonymous painting now kept at the Birmingham Museum, met notoriety for the marked use of chiaroscuro, gloomily placed on the figures and no longer torn by a directional light as in Caravaggio. The object is in good condition