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Femminielli, Portland Art Museum en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femm… (via @cantodjauricco.bsky.social, bsky.app/profile/c…)

Oil painting of two figures against a dark brown background. On the left, a man with a sour, squinting expression and a wrinkled brow wears a white ruffled cap with a pink bow. He has a yellow-ochre jacket over a pink bodice and a white collar, and a strand of red coral beads is draped around his neck. His left hand rests against his chest. On the right, a younger man with a wide, open-mouthed laugh and rosy cheeks wears a blue turban-like head wrap and a red-orange jacket with a white shirt. He holds a blue ribbon up in one hand and drapes a large blue shawl over his shoulder and arm. The scene appears to be a playful, comic genre piece with a lively contrast between the two expressions. No words are visible.A rectangular lavender museum wall label mounted on a pale blue wall, with a slight shadow along its edges. The label is printed in black sans-serif type. At the top, bold text reads "Giuseppe Bonito," followed by "Italian, 1707–1789." Below that, bold "The Femminiello" is followed by "1740/1760," then "Oil on canvas." The credit line reads "Gift of The Ross Family Fund of Equity Foundation, 2014.107.1." The label's main paragraph reads: "Femminielli, 'little female-men,' were cross-dressers in the Spanish quarter of Naples, Italy. This individual's poverty is evident in his missing tooth and goiter, a hereditary condition. The coral necklace refers to the good luck they were thought to bring. This is the only known painting of a femminiello before the advent of photography in the late 1800s."

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