[citation needed] Cézanne painted four oil portraits of this Italian boy in the red vest (in British English, a waistcoat), all in different poses, which allowed him to study the relationship between the figure and space.

[3] The most famous of the four, and the one commonly referred to by this title, is the one which depicts the boy in a melancholic seated pose with his elbow on a table and his head cradled in his hand.

[4] The Foundation E.G. Bührle, which currently owns the work, notes the painting's picturesqueness, and "a perfect balance here of high compositional intelligence and spontaneous painterly intuition.

"[2] In 1895, art critic Gustave Geffroy said it could stand comparison with the finest figure paintings of the Old Masters.

Art collector and patron Emil Georg Bührle purchased it from Reber in 1948.