TRAVERSI, Gaspare
(b. ca. 1722, Napoli, d. 1770, Roma)

The Secret Letter

c. 1755
Oil on canvas, 131 x 146 cm
Collezione Intesa Sanpaolo, Palazzo Zevallos Stigliano, Naples

This painting illustrates a young woman receiving a letter from a secret lover, delivered by a page and observed by her two elderly parents and an older gentleman dressed in the French style and with a cane, possibly a well-to-do suitor. The subject pertains to the long sixteenth- and seventeenth-century tradition of genre painting, as does its companion piece The Concert.