Provenance: Probably, English private collection (as per label on the back); Private collection, Milan.

Comparative literature: R. Pallucchini and A. Mariuz (eds.), "L'opera completa del Piazzetta", Milan 1982, pp. 93-94, n° 81 and 82.

The painting, previously unpublished and long kept in a private collection in Milan, could be compared to the serie of portraits with pairs of figures characteristic of the production of Giovanni Battista Piazzetta and his circle, at the stylistic pinnacle of his so-called "character heads", later widely distributed in print by authors of the time such as Giovanni Cattini and Marco Alvise Pitteri. In the present work, a couple of children are caught during what appears to be a geography lesson, as the compass held in the boy's hand and the planisphere which can just be seen in the lower part suggest: a snapshot of daily life which however is the pretext to portray a moment of intense humanity, made even more vivid by the girl's hand appearing on the boy's shoulder, signaling an affectionate embrace. The painting could be directly related to another pair of young children already published by R. Pallucchini in the catalogue raisonné of Piazzetta (R. Pallucchini and A. Mariuz (eds.), "L'opera completa del Piazzetta", Milan 1982, p. 94, n° 82) and sold in 2020 on the Italian auction market together with its pendant, a "Portrait of an old man and a young man". From this work already published in 1982, our painting takes up with evident analogies the face and pose of the boy, who in the published work instead holds a flute.