Two Gobbis Carved Wood. 19TH Century.

“Two Gobbis Carved Wood. Nineteenth Century.”

“The Gobbi”. Grotesque characters carved in the tradition of Gobbi Jacques Callot (1592-1635). They are shown squatting, one holding his beard and the other with his hand open over his head. The back is flat in order to suspend them in height on the wall. They come from a brewery in Alsace-Lorraine where they were hooked up. “The Gobbi were a well-known group of dwarf jokers active in the 17th century in the north of Italy, and their appearance at the St Romulus feast in Florence on July 6th, 1612 was the subject of a book by Paolo Baroni, “the famosa Glostra di Gobbi” It was on this occasion that Jacques Callot was able to observe and prepare sketches for the twenty small engravings he made on his return to Lorraine in 1621. “These characters are located at the confluence of several traditions, that of the court jesters, that of the comedia dell arte and that of the grotesques, whose work of Callot includes many examples.