Artwork Page for Untitled (Pifferari)

Details / Information for Untitled (Pifferari)

Untitled (Pifferari)

c. 1851–55

France or Italy

Medium
salted paper print from wet collodion negative
Measurements
Image: 24.9 x 25.4 cm (9 13/16 x 10 in.); Matted: 55.9 x 45.7 cm (22 x 18 in.)
Credit Line
John L. Severance Fund 1995.234
Public Domain
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Location
Not on view
Print

Description

Taken to catalogue and document cultural practices, photographs such as this one were intended as portraits of professions or ethnographic types rather than portraits of individuals. An unidentified photographer captured the picturesque pifferari, country musicians who wandered European cities around Christmas playing before images of the Virgin and on the streets. They were a common theme for French and Italian painters and photographers in the 1840s and 1850s.
A square-format salted paper print in muted brown tones depicts four people with light skin tones grouped around a tall, multi-piped instrument. At our top left, a bearded man in a hat gazes away. To our right, another man leans against a wooden barrel. Below, a woman in a shawl sits at our left, while a fourth man reclines on our right. Hazy textures soften the background wall of leaves and trellis.

Untitled (Pifferari)

c. 1851–55

France or Italy

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