Artwork
Cacasenno Riding a Horse Backwards
Cacasenno Riding a Horse Backwards is an ink print by the Baroque artist Giuseppe Maria Crespi. It dates from 1712 and is held in the collection of the National Gallery of Art.
About this work
Overview
Giuseppe Maria Crespi, a Bolognese painter of the late Baroque period, produced the print *Cacasenno Riding a Horse Backwards* around 1712. Executed as an etching on laid paper, the work presents a single figure astride a horse that is turned backward, creating a playful, almost absurd tableau that diverges from Cresci’s more conventional religious and portrait commissions.
Subject & Meaning
The image captures a man, dressed in a loose shirt and a headband, holding the reins with his right hand while the horse’s head looks leftward. The composition suggests a humorous anecdote drawn from folk tradition, where riding a horse backward may symbolize folly, inversion of norms, or simply a comic curiosity intended to amuse viewers of the time.
Technique & Style
Crespi employed fine etched lines to render the figures with a high degree of realism, using cross‑hatching and varied line weight to model volume. The laid paper surface enhances the texture of the scene, while careful shading creates depth in the rider’s clothing, the horse’s musculature, and the distant trees and clouded sky, giving the print a tangible three‑dimensional quality.
History & Provenance
Created during a phase when Crespi explored unconventional, humorous subjects, the etching reflects his willingness to step beyond the solemn themes that dominated his career. Although specific ownership records are scarce, the work has been catalogued among Crespi’s prints and is referenced in scholarly surveys of his oeuvre, confirming its attribution and dating to the early 1710s.
Artist & collection
Artist
Giuseppe Maria Crespi (14 March 1665 – 16 July 1747), nicknamed Lo Spagnuolo ('The Spaniard'), was an Italian late Baroque painter of the Bolognese School.
