“Personally, I find that Crespi’s eye captures here what one might call ‘the humanity of things’, just as penetratingly as he captures the humanity of people. So, when he recounts the truly ‘pleasing and vulgar’ incidents that occur in this old courtyard, his acuteness goes beyond the episode of ‘Bolognese’ humour and Dutch-style analysis. He touches the direct emotion of the material in that rustic façade. In the warm, vague twilight, the façade almost seems to swell and rise on itself, in keeping with the legacy Emilian tradition of ancient physicality, interpreted by Crespi’s ‘sentiment’, to the extent that it verges on resembling a frowning, pensive human forehead”.