A street altar in Rome, hung with votive offerings, attended by itinerant pipers watched by locals. Watercolour by D.W. Lindau, 1835.

The pipers (pifferari) seem likely to be identifiable, as types if not as individuals, since there are other pictures which show the same combination of figures playing music before a shrine: examples include a painting by Xaviero della Gatta, sold at Christie's, South Kensington, 3 April 1995 lot 117, and a drawing by Bartolomeo Pinelli, offered for sale at Sotheby's, New York, 28 January 1998 lot 203

A man plays the zampogna or south Italian bagpipe, while the boy in front of him holds a ciaramella (chanter or shawm). "The principal bagpipe is the zampogna, native to the south and to Sicily (where the name is cornamusa) but often heard in the north played by itinerant players. ...There are two main types of zampogna: one is played alone, the other accompanies a conical chanter (ciaramella, cornamusina, occasionally piffaro) which a second player blows directly with his mouth. ... The two-man teams, zampognari or pifferari, make a practice of coming into the towns at the Christmas season to serenade the images of the infant Christ set up at the roadside."--Grove music online, s.v. Bagpipe 7̂: other countries (iii) Italy

Rome, 1835.

1 painting : watercolour, over pencil ; sheet 23.2 x 30.2 cm

Lindau f. Romae. 1835 Beneath the shrine is a plaque inscribed: Santa Maria refugium peccatorum ora pro nobis (Holy Mary, refuge of sinners, pray for us); below the inscription, an altar with a painting of souls in hellfire painted on the front. On each side of the shrine are votive offerings, including paintings, crutches, hearts, pistols, a rosary, etc. A little boy, one of the musicians, has lowered his instrument and appears to gaze at a votive painting of a man falling off a horse

Wellcome Collection 38511i