Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

009. Jean-Baptiste Greuze

Audio

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.

Jean-Baptiste Greuze 
French; 1725–1805 
The Game of Morra, 1756 
Pen and brown ink and wash with gray wash over graphite 
2017.109

Transcription

This lively compositional drawing with many figures, done by Jean-Baptiste Greuze when he was studying in Rome in 1756, shows The Game of Morra. It's a betting game in which two contestants display a certain number of fingers from their right hand while guessing out loud the total number of fingers that will be presented by both players. It's an early variant of rock, paper, scissors, but a much more violent one.