Men and Women Seated in Church, Rome

Antonio Piccinni 1846 - 1920

Summary

Three rows of seated figures in an interior setting with columns to the left and the feet of a statue to the upper right. All the figures are facing to the right and seen in profile. There is an empty chair to the right, in front of the seated rows. The floor is tiled. This etching was one of a collection formed by print expert PG Hamerton (1834-94) for the Manchester Art Museum, an educational gallery which opened in 1886 in the industrial suburb of Ancoats. The collection was transferred to the City Art Gallery in 1912, the Art Museum maintaining that they did not have enough space to display it. On acquisition, the prints were displayed together, with a catalogue of the pithy comments on each print that Hamerton had made in 1882. For this work, he had noted, 'The etcher evidently takes a pleasure in selecting low types of intelligence, but in spite of this there is something pathetic and almost touching in the simple placidity of these faces.'