Teasing a Sleeping Girl. Artist: Gaspare Traversi (Italian, Neapolitan, ca. 1722-1770). Dimensions: 34 1/8 x 42 3/8 in. (86.7 x 107.6 cm). Date: ca. 1760.
Little is known of Traversi's career, but he was unquestionably the leading genre painter in eighteenth-century Naples. His pictures parodying the pastimes of the noble classes are particularly striking for their emphatic naturalism and biting wit. In this work an old woman tickles a young girl who has fallen asleep with her box of keepsakes on her lap.