Untitled (Pifferari) (c. 1851–55): Art, History and Details

Untitled (Pifferari) (c. 1851–55) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Taken to catalogue and document cultural practices, photographs such as this one were intended as portraits of professions or ethnographic types rather than portraits of individuals. An unidentified photographer captured the picturesque pifferari, country musicians who wandered European cities around Christmas playing before images of the Virgin and on the streets. They were a common theme for French and Italian painters and photographers in the 1840s and 1850s.

Object facts

• Title: Untitled (Pifferari)
• Date: c. 1851–55
• Culture: France or Italy
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: salted paper print from wet collodion negative
• Dimensions: Image: 24.9 x 25.4 cm (9 13/16 x 10 in.); Matted: 55.9 x 45.7 cm (22 x 18 in.)
• Collection: PH - French 19th Century
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 1995.234

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, Tom E Hinson. Catalogue of Photography. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1996.

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.