Lazarillo de Tormes and His Blind Master (before 1880): Art, History and Details

Lazarillo de Tormes and His Blind Master (before 1880) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Théodule Ribot (French, 1823–1891).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The subject of this painting comes from the 16th-century Spanish novel Lazarillo de Tormes. This tells the story of Lazarillo, a poor servant boy who worked for an impoverished blind man. Abused by his master, and never given enough to eat or drink, Lazarillo is forced to fend for himself. According to the story, he steals wine by drinking it from a straw directly from the blind man's jug. This painting relates to a cultural movement known as espagnolisme, the French interest in Spanish art and literature. Especially popular during the 1850s, espagnolisme focused upon realistic, often down-trodden characters such as Lazarillo. Instead of finding them naïve or foolishly humorous, artists such as Ribot related to their alienation from society and found inspiration in the detailed descriptions of their rough, lowly lifestyles.

Object facts

• Title: Lazarillo de Tormes and His Blind Master
• Date: before 1880
• Creator attribution: Théodule Ribot (French, 1823–1891)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on fabric
• Dimensions: Framed: 108 x 90 x 7 cm (42 1/2 x 35 7/16 x 2 3/4 in.); Unframed: 91.5 x 73.7 cm (36 x 29 in.)
• Collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960
• Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1980.282

Collection credit

Bequest of Noah L. Butkin

Further reading listed by the museum

• Hôtel Drouot. Catalogue de tableaux modernes et dessins. May 11, 1897.
• Laurence Mille, email to Victoria Sears Goldman, Oct. 27, 2015, in CMA curatorial file.
• Exposition Ribot. Paris: Bernheim-Jeune, 1911.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.