Years ago, I wandered into the modern wing of the Pitti Palace in Florence (left), and found myself alone in the sumptuous company of beautiful mid-to-late 19th century paintings, rich in pictorial poetry of the Tuscan landscapes and moments of Tuscan life, by the Italian painters, known collectively as the Macchiaioli.

Some scenes were painted horizontally, on small, wide planks of wood or cardboard, capturing the panoramic views of the Tuscan hills hugging the River Arno and its tributaries with hardened peasants tending to their quotidian chores; and others, painted on canvas, depicted scenes from forgotten parts of Florence; or interior activities of dutiful modern ladies of the emerging bourgeoisie; or valiant soldiers sacrificed in the Risorgimento—the three wars for Italian independence and unification from 1848 through 1870. Each, in turn, was full of lush color, tonal contrasts and spatial placements, executed in short fiery strokes that, from a distance, evoked the lyricism of the Tuscany. Yet as a whole they were devoid of treacly romanticism, but rich in loving realism. artes fine arts magazine

But it was the light, the supreme pervasive Tuscan sun, the myriad effects of it and the sublime truth of nature and humanity that these Italian painters caught and appropriated in their compositions. They achieved this by sketching and painting all’aperto (outdoors), some fifteen or twenty years before the French impressionists painted en plein air. Yet, little is known or appreciated about Macchiaioli outside of Italy.

Right: Giovanni Fattori, La Rotonda di Palmieri (1866)

So it was with anticipation that, on a drizzly morning of May, in Paris, I quickly walked toward the Tuileries and the Musée de l’Orangerie to see the exhibition, Les Macchiaioli 1855-1874: Des Impressionistes Italiens? Once I got there, it was like seeing old, unforgotten friends.

There were about sixty selected works, in all, by at least fourteen artists identified with the Macchiaioli. Many were from the Pitti Palace and private collections. The works shown illustrate the emotional and historical arc of this important artistic movement and the lives of these painters that were intricately woven with the tumultuous period of the Risorgimento.

The Macchiaioli artists rebelled against the established art academy stultifying conventions of ‘finished paintings’ and thematic restrictions to biblical and historical or courtly subjects. They were the descendants of Tintoretto, Caravaggio, Velasquez, and Spagnolotto (Ribera), innovating the chiaroscuro method of enriching tonal expressions and spatial depth relations in a modern context. They were true modernists, enthusiastic for the new medium of photography, with its pronounced light and shadow, and for Japanese prints and paintings and the adoption of sharper and defining white tone.

Left: Italian Impressionist Macchiaioli artists gathered for a playful photo, circa 1865.

The art term macchia (literally, patches or spots) refers to stains of colors in myriad tonal shades of light and shadow done in quick and broad impressionistic strokes of the subject matter, without preliminary drawing, as it appears to the artist’s eye. Their macchia technique was “nothing but violent chiaroscuro” wrote Telemaco Signorini (b. Florence 1835 – d. Florence 1901), one of the most important Macchiaioli, in response to a derisive comment on the name, which the artists adopted with pride. Giorgione, according to Giorgio Vasari, had already used macchia in the 1400’s to quickly paint the tonal impressions of a subject matter. As art students in Italy, they were trained in the mezzo-macchia, which is a study of objects in just two tones that enabled the artist to see broad tonal contrasts and effect of light. They did small color sketches in oil (bozetti d’invenzioni ad olio) when they painted all’aperto to quickly capture the effect of the light on their subjects, which might be used later for larger compositions or submitted for competitions.

Right: Small format oil sketch illustrating macchia technique. Telemaco Signorini, Via Torta, Venice (1870).

With their individualized interpretation of the macchia language, they painted their beliefs and in realism (il vero). The Macchiaioli mastered and expanded macchia language not only in chiaroscuro of strong tonal colors, but also further developed the spatial perspectives explored in Quattrocento Tuscany of Piero della Francesca (b. Umbria 1415 – d. Sansepolcro 1492). Each artist in the group ardently experimented, searched and formed his personal poetic voice, sung bel canto in paint.

The Macchiaioli story began in 1848, in Florence, at the famous Caffè Michelangiolo on Via Largo, (now Via Cavour), just around the corner from the Florentine Art Academy. Intellectuals, political exiles, writers and artists frequented the place. It was the center for debates about republican ideals, liberty, art, politics, and their ardent desire for a united Italy to join the modern progressive Europe. There was fierce sentiment for independence from Austrians to the north, the Spanish in Sicily and Naples, the clerical stranglehold in the Papal States, and for a unified Italy. In their prime as young artists, they were immersed in these issues and fervent in their desire for change.

Left: Silvestro Lega, Giuseppe Garibaldi (1870).

The Italian peninsula of 1848 was carved into seven separate, sovereign states, after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 and the Congress of Vienna. In early 1848, insurrections broke out in Milan, Venice, Rome, Tuscany, Sicily, and members of the Macchiaioli participated as volunteers, fighting against the Austrians and Spanish, and for a republican Rome. The 1848 conflict ended in defeat for the insurrectionists, the Italian peninsula remained fractured and mired in political maneuverings. It took another two wars to achieve independence and unification, with these artists volunteering again in nationalistic hero, Giuseppe Garibaldi’s later campaigns [1].

Right: Giovanni Boldini, Giuseppe Abbati (wearing patch over right eye, lost in battle), c. 1860; below right, Raffaello Sernesi, Solé (date unknown), an artist who was also a casualty of war. 

They were artist-soldiers, fierce patriots and republicans for social reform, who put down their paintbrushes and donned uniforms when Garibaldi or Mazzini issued calls to fight against the occupying Austrians in Lombardy, the Spanish Bourbons in Sicily and Naples, or the Habsburg grand duke in Tuscany. Young artist, Giuseppe Abbati (b. Naples, 1836 – d. Florence, 1868) lost his right eye when he fought with Garibaldi’s One Thousand (I Mille). The talented and most promising Raffaello Sernesi (b. Florence 1838 – d. Bolzano 1866) joined Garibaldi’s volunteers in Lombardi and died of wounds suffered on the battlefield. He was only 26 years of age, and represented the spirit of sacrifice for this young generation of patriots.

A good example of macchia is Giuseppe Abbati’s small, singular study of light and shadow in Cloister of the Church of Santa Croce in Florence (1861-1862) (below left). Two brown columns separate the dark spaces of the opaque interior, and a solitary sitting man—clearly a worker, seen from the back— leans against a column wearing a distinctively-bright azure hat. In the foreground, a cluster of rectangular marble masses are swathed in fierce white and black with textured brushwork and centrally placed as if posing to capture the full effect of the sun. There is no fine finish or details, just tones and color. The tonal contrast between the shadowed interior and the stark white-and-black marble is deep, rendering the mood both meditative and tranquil.

The Church of Santa Croce is world renown, housing the funeral monuments of Michelangelo, Galileo, Macchiavelli, Dante and great artworks by Giotto, Donatello and Vasari. It was being renovated in 1860’s to restore Italian heritage after the Florentines, including the Macchiaioli, took up arms and forced the Austrian grand duke to flee on April 27, 1859. It is revealing of Abbati’s sympathies with the cause that he chose to paint an unknown toiler and the materials for his labor to rebuild the church—the symbol of new Florence.

Likewise, Odoardo Borrani’s (b. Pisa, 1833 – d. Florence, 1905) The 26th of April, 1859 (1861) (right), depicts a young women sitting at a table by the open window, purposefully sewing the tri-color flag of Italy. The penetrating light is splashed through a garret window, shining on this determined young woman playing her part in the Risorgimento, on the day before the demonstrations in Florence on 27th April, forcing the Austrian grand duke from the city.

Telemarco Signorini, the most theoretical and worldly of the bunch, produced the powerful, The Ward of the Madwomen at S. Bonifazio (1865) (left), employing an angular perspective to create a vast spatial depth between the viewer and the dark open door at the far end of a large ward. The anonymous gesturing women gathered at the side tables are portrayed in muted dark-brown tones in sharp contrast to the pale white shades of the walls. The broad illumination entering from the right accentuates the contrast of the brown figures from the empty white walls punctuating the scene with an austere sense of ostracism and abandonment. Edgar Degas (1834 – 1917), the French impressionist, was reported to have seen this Signorini’s work during his sojourn in Florence and was so “fired with enthusiasm” that he adopted the spatiality and tonal shades in his later compositions of ballet dancers in a dance studio.

Silvestro Lega (b. Modigliana, 1826 – d. Florence, 1895) used his stark chiaroscuro in social settings painting bourgeois ladies in fine garbs performing their duties and his observations of social class differences [2]. One example is his, La Pergola (1868) (right) showing the ladies resting and protected from the bright sun in the shade of a pergola, while a proud-looking maidservant in the hot sun brings a pot of tea. The darker tonal shade of the pergola gives depth to the painting, with the scene spliced by slivers of light shining throughout. It is a study of spatial perspective using tonal shades set in a modern theme suggestive of class tension.

The important, Giovanni Fattori—a Livorno native—believed thoroughly in realism derived from brutal honesty, as he painted from inner feelings inspired by nature. In The Lookouts (The White Wall), 1870-72, the textured strokes of colors muted under the broad white empty wall in a diagonal perspective echoed by the parallel white road accentuate the distance from the viewer and thereby the solitariness of the three soldiers. One feels a certain lost spirit and fatigue, suggested by the three different directions of the horse heads and the listlessness of their gait, in contradiction to the attentiveness required of the lookouts.

Far left: Giovanni Fattori, Self-portrait (c. 1854); left: Fattori’s, The Lookouts (The White Wall), 1870-72).

It was reflective of Fattori’s sentiment at the time, when hoped-for social reform and freedom were left wanting after national unification. He was the most prolific of the group, with over 800 known paintings. He became a teacher at the Florentine Art Academy, where he taught painting to young Amedeo Modigliani (1886 – 1920), who was of Sephardic Jewish heritage, and also from Livorno.

In art, as well as politics, the Macchiaioli artists sought modern approaches and debated them at the café. Among the 1848 political exiles who congregated at Caffe Michelangiolo, was the dynamic Domenico Morelli, from Naples. A veteran of the Naples insurrection, he was a history painter, capturing the effects of light—both indoors and out—in deep chiaroscuro and tonal colorings. His painting had a flourish consistent with the Neapolitan landscape artists of the Posillipo school of the southern bravura.

Another influential artist of the group was Nino (Giovanni) Costa (b. Rome 1826 – d. Marina di Pisa 1903), a landscapist and a political exile resulting from his defense of republican Rome from papal forces. In the 1850’s, he had been painting alone, all’aperto, in the countryside outside of Roman, in the company of such English painters as Frederick Leighton (1830-1896), whom he befriended. In his paintings, the sun’s light was gentler and more atmospheric—at dawn or dusk—as in his Women Loading Wood at Porto d’Anzio (1852) (right). He advocated the necessity of truth (il vero) in painting, encouraging his colleagues to pursue the macchia style and to study the effects of light.

Then there was the greatest, tireless champion of the Macchiaioli, Diego Martelli (b. Florence 1839 – d. Florence 1896), an intellectual, art critic and writer, and regular at Caffe Michelangiolo. He was an avid promoter, supporter and theorist of the Macchiaioli movement. He and Signorini published the Gazetto delle arti del disegno, an art magazine, where they extolled the historical significance of the Macchiaioli, among other modern ideas. Martelli directly supported these artists by collecting their work. Martelli later traveled to Paris and became friends with Manet and Degas; the latter painting his portrait, shown in the exhibition (left) . He later gave his vast collection of his friends’ paintings to the city of Florence, which now comprises the bulk of the Macchiaioli works shown at the Pitti Palace.

Left: Edgar Degas, Diego Martelli (1879).

When still young, Diego Martelli inherited a vast estate at Castiglioncello south of Livorno, on the Tuscan coast. He opened his home for Macchiaioli artists, who would spend summer months there, painting with deep affection the Tuscan countryside: the realities of hard peasant life; its animals; and the effects of sun on natural setting, all-the-while developing their individual expressions. Their expressive use of white pigment in strident shades and texture—so vivid and striking—captured the light effects of the powerful Tuscan sun. It is especially evident in the white oxen in Borrani’s, Red Cart at Castiglioncello (1865-1866), and Fattori’s Oxen Harnessed to Cart (Bovi a Carro), 1867 (right). In another, young Raffaelo Sernesi’s The Romito Point as Viewed from Castiglioncello (1866), is a wonderful horizontal panoramic study of light on a family of lively rocks, painted before he joined Garibaldi’s army in Lombardy, where he was killed. The many Macchiaioli works of this period formed the “Castiglioncello School” of painting.

Caffe Michelangiolo closed in 1866. Most of the artist went separate ways, although many returned to Florence.

Vito D’Ancona (b. Pesaro 1825 – d. Florence 1884) and Serafino De Tivoli (b. Livorno 1826 – d. Florence 1892), were both of Sephardic Jewish heritage. Their familial roots could be traced back to the Renaissance and the Jewish migration that settled at the port cities of Tuscany. They were from merchant families who supported the Risorgimento in its call for religious freedom and social reforms. D’Ancona’s, Portico (1861) (left), shows an early macchia study, with the effects of light on a building seen through a portico, defined by deep tonal colors and quick brushwork. D’Ancona, and later De Tivoli, went to live in Paris, but eventually returned to Florence.

A much younger Giovanni Boldini (b. Ferrare 1842 – d. Paris 1931), was a portraitist, who also frequented Caffè Michelangiolo and Martelli’s Castiglioncello. He later found success in Paris. Boldini’s 1886 portrait of the operatic composer and Italian patriot, Giuseppe Verdi (b. Le Roncole 1813 – d. Milan 1901), in a black top hat and glorious white scarf around his neck, is an iconic image of the great Italian [3].

Right: Giovanni Boldini,  Giuseppe Verdi (1886).

I left the museum with renewed appreciation for the Macchiaioli, true great artists they were, who heralded modernism in Italy. They were of the generation that fought and forged an independent Italy of less than 200 years, whose unity is still tested. They made history using their painterly poetry to reflect on the times of their lives. They painted honestly from their inner feelings and were true to their beliefs—disillusioned in the end perhaps, but they never sold out.

By Linda Y. Peng, Contributing Writer

Author’s notes:

[1] The purplish-red paint color, magenta, a synthetic dye originally called fuchsine when it was discovered in 1859, was renamed after the June 1859, Battle of Magenta, near Magenta, Italy  (left), where the French and the Sardinian army defeated the Austrians during the Second Italian War of Indepence. The battlefield ran dark red from spilled blood, thus eliciting the name change.

[2] Keen depiction by Lega and other Macchiaioli, of men and women’s garments, décor and interior scenes were so detailed, that the Italian film director Luchino Visconti was said to have studied their paintings for wardrobe and scenographic accuracy in his films, Senso and The Leopard, both films set in the Risorgimento.

[3] The acronym,VERDI, served as a public rallying cry, “Vittorio Emanuele, Re D’Italia,” for Victor Emmanuel II, of Italy (1820–1878), ear-marked to become first emperor after Italian unification. The appropriation of Verdi’s name honored the composer, who was, himself, an ardent supporter of the cause.