Tranquillo Cremona was, together with Luigi Conconi and the Russian sculptor Paolo Troubetzkoy, both present in the Frugone collections, an exponent par excellence of the Lombard Scapigliatura and of that anti-academic reaction that led Italian bohemian artists to prefer subjects connected to real, everyday life over great historical representations. Portraits, female figures and genre scenes became the favourite themes of the Scapigliati artists, who, in the field of painting, reached the dissolution of form for a free relationship between light and colour. In the case of this canvas, which appeared in a monograph of the artist with the title "Piccolo ciociaro" (Little Ciociaro), the socially inspired dissolution of the subject's forms is evident. Portrait of a boy; the subject is slightly off-centre to the left of the canvas and emerges from the undefined background, forming a single vortex of light and colour.