MIEL, Jan

In picturesque scenes from the street life of Rome and of villages in the Campagna, Jan Miel shows an affinity with the genre scenes of Pieter van Laer who was the actual creator of the ‘bambocciata’ genre in Rome. About the 1640s onwards he expanded his subject matter, which was originally strictly based on Van Laer’s repertoire, with new subjects of his own invention, and with more dramatic settings. Among these are particularly the lively scenes of carnival and masked commedia dell’ arte actors, such as the Carnival Time in Rome.

This group of gods on the clouds illustrates a frequently depicted sentence by Terence: Sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus - Without Ceres (bread) and Bacchus (wine) Venus freezes. Venus acts as the unifying figure in the group, standing behind both Bacchus and Ceres with her hand placed on the latter’s shoulder while she tenderly gazes at the former. Her gentleness of gaze is mirrored by Bacchus who looks lovingly at Ceres, who also has a rapt look on her face.

The painting is signed and dated lower right: J: de Miel / peint. / 1645.

This painting is an example of the Bambocciata painted by Dutch artists in Rome. (Bambocciata: genre scene of popular life in the suburbs of Rome made popular by the Netherlandish painter Pieter van Laer, known in Italy as Il Bamboccio.) A Genoese nobleman commissioned Miel to paint scenes from the Roman carnival for his Roman apartment. In this canvas the painter set the popular characters of the Comedia dell’Arte in a small trattoria.

Jan Miel belonged to the numerous followers of Pieter van Laer, a Dutch painter working in Rome. This group of painter was known as the ‘Bamboccianti’ after the nickname of van Laer, ‘Il Bamboccio’ (which may be translated ‘little clumsy one’). Their pictures are called bambocciate (Italian for childishness). The Bamboccianti were mainly Northeners working in Rome, such as the Flemings Jan Miel and Michiel Sweerts, but also included Italians, such as Michelangelo Cerquozzi and Viviano Codazzi.