The Confession by Giuseppe Molteni, 1838
The sweet yet pert woman kneeling in the confessional was thought by some contemporary critics to represent a young mother who had yielded to the advances of an admirer. Meticulously captured in all the details of furnishing and dress, the contemporary scene was instead seen by the Catholic critic Pietro Estense Selvatico as designed to illustrate the moral beauty of everyday life. Already sought after as a fashionable portrait painter in the 1830s, Giuseppe Molteni thus developed a type of genre painting then in great demand on the market, depicting aspects of society and day-to-day life in a variety of styles ranging from folksy and anecdotal to dramatic in subjects of social satire.
Via: Femme de Lettres, WikiCommons
