Genre Scene (?) : Drunken Man Being Pulled by Women into a Pool in Which There Are Two Figures and a Dog, People Playing Quoits in the Background

This drawing was among a group of six by various unattributed Italian artists that was sold as one lot (603) on the final day of William Roscoe's sale of drawings on the 26th September 1816. An earlier seventeenth or eighteenth-century Italian collector, possibly based in Bologna, believed that this drawing along with WAG 1995.280 and WAG 1995.282 were by Pier Francesco Cittadini (1613 or 1616-81), who was born in Milan but, aged 17, entered the Bolognese studio of Guido Reni. In the 1640s Cittadini travelled to Rome where he met the community of Flemish and French artists, known as the 'bamboccianti', whose earthy naturalistic genre scenes of everyday life, influenced Cittadini's own landscapes. This drawing may represent a scene of drunken revelry or it might be intended to illustrate the biblical parable (told in Luke chapter 15 verses 11-32) of the Prodigal Son, wasting his inheritance on drink and riotous women.