While watching an archaeology program, I saw the slow uncovering of a mosaic floor in the ruins of an ancient church. As the dust fell away, one panel emerged—a wealthy man who had renounced his fortune, taken vows, and become a monk. In time, he was canonized as a local saint. His story, set in stone, was one of voluntary poverty—a life stripped bare as a spiritual exercise.
What struck me was the distance between this chosen poverty and the kind lived by those for whom scarcity is not an option. To desire poverty, one must first have known abundance. The rich can find virtue in renouncing what they have; the actual poor, for whom want is the steady rhythm of life, rarely romanticize it. This gap between chosen and imposed poverty is as old as the church itself—and it resurfaced for me when I turned to Giacomo Ceruti’s Pitocco seduto.
Ceruti, known as Il Pitocchetto (“the little beggar painter”), worked in 18th-century Brescia, producing what D’Adda and Valseriati (2023) describe as “the most significant artistic representation of the poor in Italy until then” (para. 1). His Padernello cycle—a series of large-scale portraits of beggars—was remarkable for its scale, number, and pictorial language. These works were not gathered by the poor but collected and displayed by the local aristocracy, filling villas with what art historian Roberto Longhi once called “insolent and gigantic reportages” (as cited in D’Adda & Valseriati, 2023, para. 3).
The paradox is striking: in Brescia, where in some districts “the poor were an estimated 71% of the total population” during the mid-18th century (D’Adda & Valseriati, 2023, para. 12), the wealthy commissioned images of poverty for their private enjoyment. The reasons remain debated. Some scholars connect it to a local “realistic vision” cultivated by a nobility cut off from political power and steeped in managing estates (D’Adda & Valseriati, 2023, para. 9). Others point to religious influences, especially Jansenism, which held that both “poverty of spirit as well as material poverty constituted the sign of a predestination and of the election to a good afterlife” (D’Adda & Valseriati, 2023, para. 33). Whether seen as moral exemplars, charitable reminders, or simply fashionable curiosities, these paintings sat in the homes of people far removed from the daily hunger, instability, and labor of those depicted.
In Pitocco seduto, the man’s patched clothing and steady gaze resist allegory. There is no sermon here, no saintly glow—only the presence of someone inhabiting poverty without choice. And as Giorgio Manganelli once argued, perhaps these figures are “a rhetorical register, a choice of language” rather than evidence of “Christian solicitude for the humble” (as cited in D’Adda & Valseriati, 2023, para. 46). Ceruti’s passion was “splendid and grim” (para. 46), a refusal to soften the truth of poverty even if his patrons viewed it through the lens of distance.
That distance is not unfamiliar to me. At Joplin High School, where nearly half of our students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, and where some elementary schools approach three-quarters, poverty is not a choice—it is the air my students breathe. For them, the conversation is not about renunciation but about survival. And yet, teaching in Missouri can feel like a modern analogue to the monastic life. Teachers here are among the lowest-paid in the nation. We work within material limits, sustained by the community we serve and the purpose we carry. There is a kind of vow in it—not to poverty for its own sake, but to a life lived with fewer illusions about wealth and control.
This is where I see an echo between Brescia’s 18th-century welfare institutions and Missouri’s modern public school funding structure. In Ceruti’s time, aid to the poor was managed by the patrician elite, who “covered the posts of directors and administrators of those same institutions which their ancestors had founded and financed two centuries earlier” (D’Adda & Valseriati, 2023, para. 14). These charities were structured to rehabilitate only those deemed worthy, imposing rigid discipline and vocational training designed to fit them into roles that sustained the social order. Likewise, in Missouri, our schools are funded primarily through local property taxes, a mechanism that tends to reinforce existing inequalities. Wealthier districts can afford smaller classes, broader programs, and richer resources, while high-poverty communities like Joplin must stretch every dollar. Both systems carry an air of benevolence, yet both operate within constraints that preserve the status quo more than they dismantle it.
Monastic communities live within limits not as punishment but as a means to focus on the essential. In the same way, teaching strips away distractions, forcing one to meet each student as an individual. My students are not symbols; they are not, as Ceruti’s patrons may have seen their subjects, objects of curiosity or moral theater. They are young people with ambitions, humor, stubbornness, and resilience, each carrying the weight of circumstances they did not choose.
Ceruti’s work was shaped by the tension between truth and patronage—depicting the poor without gloss, even when those paying for the work might have preferred the gloss. Monastic life, at its best, is about inhabiting limitation with purpose. Teaching, too, is about working inside the boundaries—time, resources, policy—and still making something human flourish.
The saint in the mosaic and the beggar in Ceruti’s painting both inhabit poverty, but only one chose it. My students live in the latter space. My work is to meet them there—not to romanticize their circumstances, but to insist that their worth is not defined by them. Perhaps that is the truest kinship between artist, monk, and teacher: the practice of presence, sustained over years, in service to what is difficult, enduring, and deeply human.
After nearly two decades in the classroom, I have come to see this as my own long-term vow. It is not cloistered life, but it is committed life—a decision to remain in a place where need is constant, resources are limited, and the work is never finished. Like the monk in the mosaic, I chose this path; unlike the man in Pitocco seduto, my poverty is voluntary. But my calling, like Ceruti’s art, is bound to the truth that every human being—whether painted, taught, or simply seen—deserves the dignity of being recognized.
References
D’Adda, R., & Valseriati, E. (2023, March 30). Why would the rich showcase the poor: The art of Giacomo Ceruti. Conceptual Fine Arts. https://www.conceptualfinearts.com/cfa/2023/03/30/why-would-the-rich-showcase-the-poor-the-art-of-giacomo-ceruti/