Untitled (Pifferari)
1853
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1853
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Untitled (Pifferari) is a 1853 by Unknown, a Romanticism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see two men in tattered coats standing on a city street. One plays a wooden flute, the other a small drum. Their faces are worn, but their postures are proud. This photo wasn’t meant to show real people. It was made to document a type—the *pifferari*, musicians who traveled from the countryside to play in cities during Christmas. They were a favorite subject in the 1850s, appearing in paintings and photos across France and Italy. If you like this, look up the subject *france or italy* for more images of street life from the time.
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.
Read the full account in the museum source.
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