Vincenzo Gemito🎨 was essentially self-taught. Discovered on the foundling hospital's doorstep and adopted by a poor artisan, Gemito got work in a sculptor's studio when he was nine years old.
He ultimately worked for two local artists, but neither seems to have had much stylistic influence on him.
By age sixteen, Gemito had sold a statue to the city of Naples.
His realistic representations of Neapolitan street life marked a dramatic shift from earlier artists' sentimentalizing.