Born in Milan in 1698, for family reasons he maintained a constant relationship with Brescia from an early age, where he is attested as early as 1711.
His first known work, the Madonna of the Rosary and Saints Charles Borromeo, Apollonia, Lucia and Rocco for the parish church of Rino di Sonico in Valcamonica, dated 1723, is located in the Brescia region. The modest quality of the painting is a disconcerting counterweight to the extraordinary production of portraits of Brescian personalities, whose chronology is established around the two certain dates of the Portrait of Giovanni Maria Fenaroli (1724) and the Portrait of Giulio and Giovan Battista Cattaneo (1732).
Rather than painting religious pictures, Ceruti took pleasure in depicting humble subjects, soldiers, peasants and beggars, thus perpetuating the tradition of the most authentic Lombard realism.
These characteristics make Ceruti one of the most interesting artists of the 18th century, open to all the mental interests most deprecated by academic culture (but, on the other hand, well appreciated by modern critics) and, for this century, immersed in Arcadia as rare as it is surprising and significant.
Ceruti's astonishing naturalism, his attentive and participatory adherence to reality, his identification with the plight of the humblest and his realistic depiction of their existence, as demonstrated in his works, earned him the nickname “Pitocchetto”.
As happens in his depictions of the poor and the ragged, even in still lifes Pitocchetto, finds a way to renew the tired iconographic custom by means of the unprecedented verism with which he looks at and portrays his subjects, creating images of extraordinary poetry and evocation.Between 1742 and 1743 Ceruti is documented in Milan. Also in 1743 he moved to Piacenza. He died in his hometown in 1767.
His personality came more and more to light with memorable exhibitions starting with I pittori della realtà in Lombardia, Milan 1953; Fra Galgario e il Settecento in Bergamo, Milan, 1955; Giacomo Ceruti, Milan, 1966 edited by G. Testori; Mina Gregori's monograph, Giacomo Ceruti, Bergamo, 1982 that clarified on a documentary basis the biography itself and highlighted the formation, artistic career and historical position of this great master; up to the exhibition Da Caravaggio a Ceruti.