We are grateful to Mariolina Olivari for kindly confirming the attribution on the basis of the original.

Provenance: Private collection, Pavia

Comparative literature: M. A. Baroncelli, "Faustino Bocchi-Enrico Albricci pittori di bambocciate", Brescia 1965 pl. XXX, fig. 44;
M. Olivari, "Faustino Bocchi e l'arte di figurar pigmei", Milan 1990, pp. 149 and 220;
D. Dotti, "Moretto, Savoldi, Romanino, Ceruti. 100 capolavori dalle collezioni bresciane", Milan 2014, pp. 150-151.

The narrative subject of the present painting and of its pendant (next lot) is characteristic of the works of both Faustino Bocchi and Enrico Albricci, to whose specific hand these two canvases can both be traced back. The grotesque theme of the fight between the dwarves and the frogs/toads (enemies of the pygmies which, in other cases, are instead represented by other apparently gigantic animals such as shrimps or crabs) is certainly one of the luckiest of the genre and includes a narrative arc that from the first painting, depicting the moment of amazement and fear following the attack of the frogs, then moves to the ending represented in the second one, with the killing of the anthropophagous toad and the recovery of the body of the swallowed dwarf.
The attribution to Enrico Albricci derives both from the comparison with other works of similar subject (see M. A. Baroncelli, "Faustino Bocchi-Enrico Albricci pittori di bambocciate", Brescia 1965 pl. XXX fig. 44 or D. Dotti, "Moretto, Savoldi , Romanino, Ceruti. 100 capolavori dalle collezioni bresciane", Milan 2014, pp. 150-151) but, above all, by the presence of what is in effect the preparatory drawing, with minimal variations, for the first of our two paintings in the so-called "Album of bambocciate" of the Civiche Raccolte Grafiche e Fotografiche del Gabinetto dei Disegni del Castello Sforzesco in Milan ("Dwarfs fighting with toads", id. SIRBEC 4y010-02184, sec. Album D 2,12), already attributed in the past to Faustino Bocchi but today considered to be almost entirely by Albricci.