(Bagheria/Palermo 1912–1987 Rome)
Stiratrice e ragazzo di Caravaggio, 1974, signed and dated; signed and dated on the reverse, oil on canvas, 125 x 205 cm, framed

Provenance:
Francesco Pellin Collection, Varese
European Private Collection

Exhibited:
Turin, Promotrice Belle Arti, I grandi formati di Renato Guttuso,
21 May 1975, exh. cat. with ill.
Todi, Palazzo del Popolo, Opere scelte di Renato Guttuso,
16 May – 13 June 1976, exh. cat
Busto Arsizio, Italiana Arte, Renato Guttuso, 13 October –
27 November 1977, exh. cat. with ill.
Venice, Centro Cultura di Palazzo Grassi, Guttuso. Opere dal
1931 al 1981, 4 April – 20 June 1982, exh. cat. p. 195 with ill.
Palermo, Palazzo Comitini, Guttuso e la Sicilia. Opere dal 1970
a oggi, 20 April – 31 May 1985, exh. cat. p. 101 with ill.
Milan, Fondazione Antonio Mazzotta, Renato Guttuso. Opere della Fondazione Francesco Pellin, curated by E. Crispolti, 27 January –
6 March 2005, exh. cat. pp. 140 – 141, no. 40 with ill.
Parma, Fondazione Magnani Rocca Traversetolo, Guttuso. Passione
e realtà, 11 September–8 December 2010, exh. cat.

Literature:
“La Stampa”, Turin, 21 May 1975, p. 8 with ill.
M. De Micheli, Guttuso, Vanessa Editoriale d’arte, Milan 1976,
pl. 13 with ill.
“L’Espresso”, Rome, 11 April 1982, p. 186 with ill.
“Arte”, a. XII, no. 118, Milan, April 1982, p.66 with ill.
E. Crispolti, Catalogo ragionato generale dei dipinti di Renato Guttuso, Mondadori &Associati, Milan 1985, vol. III, p. 190 no. 74/4, with ill. pp. 198–199
N. Falcone, Almanaccu sicilianu, Pungitopo Editrice, Marina di Patti (Messina) 1987, p. 75 with ill.
E. Crispolti, Leggere Guttuso, Mondadori, Milan 1987, with ill.
no. 81, pp. 200–201, 249
E. Crispolti, Catalogo ragionato generale dei dipinti di Renato Guttuso, Mondadori & Associati, Milan 1989, vol. IV, p. 219 no. 74/4

Stiratrice e ragazzo di Caravaggio was painted by Guttuso in 1974, the year otherwise taken up with work for La Vucciria. The painting arguably represents the artist’s best figurative work to date. Its composite structure juxtaposes the individual elements of a contemporary nude woman ironing, and a ‘still life’ laundry basket filled with fresh white sheets, with the figure of a boy referencing Caravaggio’s Martyrdom of St. Matthew, from the Contarelli Chapel in San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome (1599–1602).
The two figures and the basket are foregrounded, albeit on slightly staggered planes. This has the effect of closing down any sense of perspective in the room, hinted at through deep brown shadow, and highlighted only by reflections of the white sheets which chromatically punctuate the space itself, somehow thus constructing it [...].

The composition is based on presentational ‘rhetoric’, successfully uniting three different, largely unrelated, reference points [...].
Reality and history are thus assimilated in the Guttusian imagination through the concrete continuity of experience. And the invasive Caravaggian boy almost becomes a part of the laundress’s work flow, notwithstanding the fact that his use as a reference for Caravaggio is clear and deliberate. This marks the start of a process of imaginative contamination of reality and history, of culture, which will recur in Guttuso’s subsequent work, in which otherwise incongruous artifacts are assimilated. [...]
These figures are almost a textual citation, almost a ready made history of art reference, and yet their physicality and the concrete nature of their images renders them as living characters on the canvas: representatives of historical memory witnessing the lived present. [...] A new composite of fantastic and subtly visionary ‘realism’, in which ‘allegorical’ significance persistently emerges.

(E. Crispolti, Renato Guttuso. Opere della Fondazione Francesco Pellin, Edizioni Mazzotta, Milan 2005, p. 140)