Uffizi Galleries acquire rare portrait by Giacomo Ceruti

10 November 2025

The Uffizi Galleries, Florence, have acquired a rare Portrait of a Moor by Giacomo Ceruti (1698–1767)

During the Renaissance and Baroque periods, Black figures appear in Italian art with some frequency, from magi to dark-skinned pages and maids. The most common form of sculpture depicting the black figure in the eighteenth century was the “blackamoor” statuary found in the decorative arts and architecture. Holding up a platter, urn, or vase, and often dressed in Moorish or Turkish costume, these ornamental figures point to the actual black servants, often simply termed “Moors”, who worked as pages, footmen, and valets de chambre and who were in fact costumed in the Turkish-style feathered caps and turbans fashionable in the period. Ceruti’s beggar, dressed in rags, stands in marked contrast to these figures.

The reputation of Ceruti, active in northern Italy in the eighteenth century, is based on his paintings of impoverished people from the margins of society, whom he depicts not as comedic, dehumanized figures or as types, but as individuals rendered with great empathy. His paintings of beggars are landmarks in the history of European art, remarkable for their seemingly unvarnished directness, and for the great human dignity the artist conferred on the victims of a hierarchical society.