Plate 8: Bertoldino, enraged by the croaking frogs, throws his strongbox into the fish pond, from "Bertoldo, Bertoldino, and Cacasenno"
1705–15
Medium
Etching
Dimensions
Sheet (Trimmed): 9 1/16 × 5 7/8 in. (23 × 14.9 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1953
Accession Number
53.535.8
Art Historical Context
Giuseppe Maria Crespi’s etching captures a lively moment from the popular Italian novella *Bertoldo, Bertoldino, and Cacasenno*, a collection of humorous folk tales that delighted readers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In this scene, the simple-minded Bertoldino, driven to fury by croaking frogs, hurls his strongbox into a pond—an absurd gesture that highlights the story’s comic spirit and Crespi’s gift for depicting everyday human folly with warmth and wit. Created between 1705 and 1715, the print belongs to a series of etchings in which Crespi translated the novella’s episodes...
About the Artist
Giuseppe Maria Crespi · 1665–1747
Giuseppe Maria Crespi (1665–1747) was an Italian painter of the late Baroque period whose innovative genre scenes and unorthodox approach to religious painting made him one of the most original artists of early eighteenth-century Bologna. Born in Bologna, he trained under Domenico Maria Canuti, Carlo Cignani, and in the tradition of the Carracci academy, but developed a markedly personal style tha...