Woman with a Fruit Bowl 1854

Giuseppe Mazzolini made this painting of a woman with a fruit bowl in nineteenth-century Italy. Mazzolini lived at a time of great social change, when the institutions of art were themselves changing, as the old patronage system was gradually replaced by public exhibitions and art markets. The woman in the painting is richly dressed and holds a bowl of fruit above her head. The painting may represent the virtue of charity, with the woman offering gifts to the viewer. But to whom is she offering these gifts? The answer is, to the art-buying public of the time, the rising middle class, who sought moral improvement as well as aesthetic pleasure from their art. The painting shows the social forces that shaped artistic production. The records of art exhibitions at the time, along with sales figures, can help us understand the values and assumptions of this society, as well as the changing role of art.