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| Michelangelo Cerquozzi Bambocciata ca. 1640-50 oil on canvas Pinacoteca Capitolina, Rome |
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| Michelangelo Cerquozzi The Trough ca. 1640-50 oil on copper Palazzo Corsini, Rome |
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| Michelangelo Cerquozzi The Rehearsal, or, A Scene from the Commedia dell' Arte ca. 1630-40 oil on canvas private collection |
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| Michelangelo Cerquozzi Woman carding Linen 1630 oil on panel Palazzo Pitti, Florence |
"Michelangelo Cerquozzi was much admired by his fellow artists. His two closest friends were painters – Domenico Viola and Giacinto Brandi – and he was on excellent terms with Pietro da Cortona. He was always generous with younger men, and he went out of his way to encourage his potential rival Giacomo Borgognone. We also know that some of his most important admirers and patrons came from the professional classes. There was, for instance, the distinguished lawyer Raffaelo Marchesi to whom he bequeathed some of his works, and the doctor Vincenzo Neri whom with a group of other friends he immortalized in one of his finest paintings [directly below]."
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| Michelangelo Cerquozzi The Artist with a Group of Friends in a Roman Garden before 1660 oil on canvas Museumslandschaft Hessen, Kassel |
"Cerquozzi was soon taken up by some of the leading aristocratic families, but of a kind rather different from those who circled around the Barberini court and helped to spread the fame of artists such as Romanelli, Poussin and Testa. His first great successes were apparently painted for an official at the Spanish embassy, and it is possible that he may have been employed there at the very time that Velasquez came to stay as a guest of the Ambassador Monterey in 1630. There is also some evidence to suggest that both Cerquozzi and Velasquez painted bambocciate for the most important of the Hispanophil clans in Rome, the Colonna. . . . Certainly Cerquozzi's career was closely linked to Spain and her supporters in Rome. He himself used to wear Spanish dress and until his later years nearly all his more important patrons were within the Spanish sphere of influence. . . . Whatever their political affiliation, most of these families showed a striking contrast in taste with the more cultivated Barberini circle. They tended to ignore the grander history painters and the noble balance between classicism and Venetian colour which these artists were fostering as well as the exuberance of the Baroque. . . . And yet Cerquozzi's success with the aristocratic society of Rome is certainly reflected in his art. As far as dating can be established at all, it seems that the small pictures with scenes from popular life belong mostly to his early years when he was closely following Van Laer and largely working for dealers, but that later he turned more and more to much larger pictures, which were painted to commission, and that he then widened the range of his subject-matter. There is not much reason for believing that this change was the direct result of specific pressures from his patrons, for we know that the more authentically popular and coarse bambocciate continued to fetch very high prices. Rather it seems to have sprung naturally from his closer association with them and, consequently, from a gradual acceptance of their values – a process not unknown among artists of all kinds since Cerquozzi's day."
– Francis Haskell, from Patrons and Painters: a Study of the Relations between Italian Art and Society in the Age of the Baroque (Yale University Press, 1980)
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| Michelangelo Cerquozzi St John the Baptist preaching in the Wilderness before 1660 oil on canvas Beecroft Art Gallery, Southend, Essex |
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| Michelangelo Cerquozzi Battle Scene before 1660 oil on canvas private collection |
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| Michelangelo Cerquozzi Peasants resting among Ruins before 1660 oil on canvas National Museum, Warsaw |
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| Michelangelo Cerquozzi and Viviano Codazzi The Colosseum and the Arch of Constantine (figures by Cerquozzi, architectural landscape by Codazzi) ca. 1650-60 oil on canvas private collection |
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| Michelangelo Cerquozzi and Viviano Codazzi Classical Ruins with the Colosseum in the Background (figures by Cerquozzi, architectural landscape by Codazzi) ca. 1655 oil on canvas Chiswick House, London |
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| Michelangelo Cerquozzi Children picking Fruit ca. 1640-45 oil on canvas Museo del Prado, Madrid |
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| Michelangelo Cerquozzi Harvesting Pomegranates ca. 1640-60 oil on canvas Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam |
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| Michelangelo Cerquozzi Still-life with Pumpkins, Grapes, Peaches, Figs, Plums, Pears and Pomegranate before 1660 oil on canvas private collection |
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| Michelangelo Cerquozzi The Good Thief before 1660 oil on slate private collection |