Poor living conditions were often the cause of bad health and early death, as well as of bodily malformations, suggested here by the sitter’s distorted back. Confronting the viewer head on, this shoeless, disabled man is captured in his attempt to appeal to a passer-by’s goodness. His hat is ready for a pious soul to toss in money.
In early modern Europe pauperization had forced people to leave the countryside and search for charitable aid in cities. The tag attached to the sitter’s necklace may in fact have been an official license to beg, introduced by local authorities to distinguish genuinely poor people from thieves. A celebrated painting, entitled El patizambo, por José de Ribera, by the Spanish artist Jusepe de Ribera (1591-1652) shows a young, disabled beggar holding one such paper authorizing him to beg, which reads in Latin: ‘Give me alms for the love of God’.
Such genre subjects were common in seventeenth-century art, a time in which the art market had developed a taste for images of poverty-stricken and sick people, depicted while begging and described in very naturalistic ways. Beggars were most often represented using a staff to walk. In this drawing however, the beggar’s striking features with broad nostrils, wide mouth and a shifty gaze, hint that this could be a caricature rather than a faithful portrait. It may even be a mocking self-portrait of the artist begging for commissions.

John Rushout, Earl of Northwick (1770-1859); his estate sale, Sotheby's (London), 1-4 November 1920, lot 45 (as Annibale Carracci); F.B. Neumayer (London); purchased there by Sir Robert Witt, London (1872-1952), n.d.; Witt Bequest 1952

Watermark: Watermarks: centre: Strasburg lily, possibly above a triangle, but unable to see more clearly to identify due to the mount. Mount (historic), Verso: centre: “PORTAL” (papermaker who founded his mill in Hampshire in 1712; absence of a date and eventual partner name 'Bridges' suggests this paper dates pre-1794).

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