A Pumpkin Used as a Fishing Boat
1769
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1769
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
A Pumpkin Used as a Fishing Boat is a 1769 by Filippo Morghen, a Romanticism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a tiny man in a hollowed-out pumpkin, floating on water with a fishing line. This is one of ten strange prints about life on the moon, made in 1769. People then loved stories of imaginary worlds—Morghen filled his with giant rats, scissor-wielding hunters, and pumpkin boats like this one. It’s playful, but also a little creepy. If you like odd old prints, look up *sfumato*—a soft-blurring technique that makes edges melt, used in dreamier works of the time.
