Street vendor selling vegetables to a woman

The painting is among those chosen by Hackert to decorate the “Back Room of the Gallery”, which functioned as a Game Room.

The protagonist of the work is a donkey loaded with panniers, overflowing with vegetables, which strikes with its very tender look. On the right is a “verdumaro” or “seller of vegetables” – as indicated in some engravings of the time – wearing a traditional red headdress and a green jacket, showing his produce to a commoner dressed in red, who hints at a smile.

Due to its allusive meaning, the work must have been considered suitable for an environment dedicated, almost certainly, to men only. The scene is also repeated, exactly, in one of the compositions of the nativity scene of the Royal Palace of Caserta.

After the site was decommissioned, the painting became part of the property of the Royal Palace of Caserta. Identified by Carmen Masi as part of the ancient heritage of Carditello, the painting had been lent to the Prefecture of Caserta, from which it was only retrieved in 2014.