Private collection, Milan

F. Mazzocca, Angelo Inganni 1807-1880. A painter from Brescia in romantic Milan, Brescia 1998, pp. 212-214.

There are currently two published versions of this subject, replicated by Inganni after some time; the first, and best known, is the one dating back to 1856 (Trieste, Museo Sartorio) and coming from Casa Rusconi in the Julian capital, while the second to 1875, and therefore almost twenty years after the Trieste version (F. Mazzocca , Angelo Inganni 1807-1880: a Brescian painter in romantic Milan, Milan, 1998, pp. 212-214).The this piece becomes of particular interest, since it is placed halfway between the two versions being signed and dated 1869, becoming the third known at the moment. Furthermore, it also allows us to think about the modus operandi of the Brescian master who, as often happened, started from a more contained dimension precisely in the wake of a Flemish philological recovery, up to reaching more considerable dimensions, with the clear intention of bringing genre scenes to a monumental scale. cm. and ours 50 x 66 cm.The exuberant chromatic range, typical of the painter, dissolves among the multitude of figures amassed at the puppet theatre, which finds an almost fetishistic collocation with the painter, as Mazzocca himself writes (whom he thanks): "Turning one's gaze to the bright Piazza della Loggia, after having met an elegant couple, a hunter with his likeable spinone and a shoe shiner, one is a spectator of the puppet theatre, an inevitable presence in all the Brescian views of the Loggia and again painted by Inganni in two medium-sized canvases" (F. Mazzocca, Angelo Inganni 1807-1880: a Brescian painter in romantic Milan , Milan, 1998, p. 212).Now we can add a third and notable version, on which the painter's gaze insists on some details, from the skirt to blue and white stripes of the girl on the right, to faz lumps of the central group, up to the mother with the child looking out of the window to simulate a popular Virgin with the child.