Jean-Baptiste Greuze

Greuze spent time in Italy between 1755 and 1757, and when he returned to Paris, this was the one drawing from his Roman sojourn that he exhibited at the Salon of 1757. The rather sordid subject, which is set in an appropriately ramshackle courtyard, is the betting game of morra, in which two competitors display a certain number of fingers from their right hands while guessing out loud the total number of fingers that will be presented by both players.