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Macchiaioli Art | History and Sitemap

The Macchiaioli were a group of Italian painters active in Tuscany in the second half of the nineteenth century, who, breaking with the antiquated conventions taught by the Italian academies of art, did much of their painting outdoors in order to capture natural light, shade and color.
This practice relates the Macchiaioli to the French Impressionists who came to prominence a few years later, although the Macchiaioli pursued somewhat different purposes.

Federico Zandomeneghi - Il giubbetto rosso, 1895

Da sinistra seduti: Serafino de Tivoli, Saverio Altamura, Silvestro Lega, Ferdinando Bonamici. - Da sinistra in piedi: Giuseppe Bianchi, ignoto, Cristiano Banti, Odoardo Borrani.

The most notable artists of this movement were: Giuseppe Abbati, Cristiano Banti, Odoardo Borrani, Vincenzo Cabianca, Adriano Cecioni, Vito D'Ancona, Serafino De Tivoli, Giovanni Fattori, Raffaello Sernesi, Silvestro Lega and Telemaco Signorini.

The movement originated with a small group of artists, many of whom had been revolutionaries in the uprisings of 1848. In the late 1850s, the artists met regularly at the Caffè Michelangiolo in Florence to discuss art and politics.

These idealistic young men, dissatisfied with the art of the academies, shared a wish to reinvigorate Italian art by emulating the bold tonal structure they admired in such old masters as Rembrandt, Caravaggio and Tintoretto.
They also found inspiration in the paintings of their French contemporaries of the Barbizon school.

The movement

They believed that areas of light and shadow, or "macchie" (literally patches or spots) were the chief components of a work of art.
The word macchia was commonly used by Italian artists and critics in the nineteenth century to describe the sparkling quality of a drawing or painting, whether due to a sketchy and spontaneous execution or to the harmonious breadth of its overall effect.

In its early years the new movement was ridiculed. A hostile review published on November 3, 1862 in the journal Gazzetta del Popolo marks the first appearance in print of the term Macchiaioli.
The term carried several connotations: it mockingly implied that the artists' finished works were no more than sketches, and recalled the phrase "darsi alla macchia", meaning, idiomatically, to hide in the bushes or scrubland.

The artists did, in fact, paint much of their work in these wild areas. This sense of the name also identified the artists with outlaws, reflecting the traditionalists' view that new school of artists was working outside the rules of art, according to the strict laws defining artistic expression at the time.

Giovanni Fattori - Soldati francesi del '59 (1859)

Although the Macchiaioli have often been compared to the Impressionists, they did not go as far as their younger French contemporaries in the pursuit of optical effects.
Erich Steingräber says the Macchiaioli "declined to divide up their palette into the components of the colour-spectrum, and did not paint blue shadows. This is why their pictures lack the all-penetrating light that eclipses colours and contours and gives rise to the 'vibrism' peculiar to Impressionist painting. The independent identity of the individual figures is unimpaired".
The verdict that the Macchiaioli were "failed impressionists" has been countered by an alternative view which places the Macchiaioli in a category of their own, a decade ahead of the Parisian impressionists.
This interpretation views the Macchiaioli as early modernists, with their broad theories of painting capturing the essence of subsequent movements that would not see the light of day for another decade or more.
In this view the Macchiaioli emerge as being very much embedded in their social fabric and context, literally fighting alongside Giuseppe Garibaldi on behalf of the Risorgimento and its ideals.

As such, their works provide comments on various socio-political topics, including Jewish emancipation, prisons and hospitals, and women's conditions, including the plight of war widows and life behind the lines.
The Macchiaioli did not follow Monet's practice of finishing large paintings entirely en plein air, but rather used small sketches painted out-of-doors as the basis for works finished in the studio.

Many of the artists of the Macchiaioli died in penury, only achieving fame towards the end of the 19th century.
Today the work of the Macchiaioli is much better known in Italy than elsewhere; much of the work is held, outside the public record, in private collections there.
The Macchiaioli were the subject of an exhibition at the Chiostro del Bramante in Rome, October 11, 2007 - February 24, 2008, which traveled to the Villa Bardini in Florence, March 19 - June 22, 2008.
Another exhibition of the Macchiaioli was held at the Terme Tamerici in Montecatini, Italy, August 12, 2009 - March 18, 2010.
The Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris mounted an exhibition of the Macchiaioli April 10 - July 22, 2013. | © Wikipedia

Francesco Paolo Michetti - Ritratto di Giuseppe Verdi, 1887

Francesco Paolo Michetti - The procession on Good Friday, 1895

Giovanni Fattori - Buoi al tramonto

Giuseppe De Nittis - Colazione in giardino, 1883

Niccolò Cannicci - Le gramignaie al fiume, 1896

Mario Puccini - Barconi a fortezza, 1920

Niccolò Cannicci - Le gramigna ie al fiume (particolare)

Oscar Ghiglia - Gustavo Sforni in veranda che legge, 1913

Oscar Ghiglia - Ritratto della moglie Isa

Silvestro Lega - Signora al pianoforte
Silvestro Lega - Signora al pianoforte

I Macchiaioli sono un gruppo di artisti attivi a Firenze nella seconda metà dell'Ottocento.

Storia

Il termine venne coniato nel 1862 da un recensore della «Gazzetta del Popolo» che così definì con intenti denigratori quei pittori che intorno al 1855 avevano dato origine ad un rinnovamento anti-accademico della pittura italiana in senso verista.

Al Caffè Michelangelo a Firenze, attorno al critico Diego Martelli, un gruppo di pittori dà vita al movimento dei macchiaioli.
Questo movimento vorrebbe rinnovare la cultura pittorica nazionale.

La poetica macchiaiola è verista opponendosi al Romanticismo, al Neoclassicismo e al Purismo accademico, e sostiene che l'immagine del vero è un contrasto di macchie di colore e di chiaroscuro, ottenuti tramite una tecnica chiamata dello specchio nero, utilizzando uno specchio annerito con il fumo permettendo di esaltare i contrasti chiaroscurali all'interno del dipinto.
L'arte di questi pittori consisteva "nel rendere le impressioni che ricevevano dal vero col mezzo di macchie di colori di chiari e di scuri".
I principali esponenti di questa corrente pittorica furono: Telemaco Signorini, Raffaello Sernesi, Giuseppe Abbati, Odoardo Borrani, Adriano Cecioni, Giovanni Fattori, Serafino De Tivoli, Silvestro Lega, Stefano Bruzzi, Vincenzo Cabianca, Cristiano Banti, Vito D'Ancona, Giovanni Costa, Ferdinando Buonamici, Niccolò Cannicci.
Ebbero un esordio "macchiaiolo" Giovanni Boldini e Federico Zandomeneghi prima del loro trasferimento a Parigi.

Origine del nome

Il nome fu utilizzato da un giornalista per la prima volta nel 1862 in occasione di un'esposizione fiorentina. In realtà l'espressione fu coniata dal giornalista in senso piuttosto denigratorio, ma i pittori oggetto della definizione decisero da allora in poi di adottare tale termine come identificativo del loro gruppo.

Il contenuto paesaggistico tipico del movimento dei Macchiaioli viene più volte ripreso per coerenza dell'opposizione verso gli ideali del Purismo, tra cui il sublime teorizzato da Edmund Burke, un sublime simbolico e non percepito nella realtà dei partigiani.

Il sublime dell'arte italiana invece è molto simile a quello della Vastitas, apprezzato nei paesaggi a campo aperto dagli stessi partigiani, tra cui Giovanni Fattori.
Il nome fa riferimento al fatto che questi pittori eliminavano totalmente la linea ed il punto geometrico, in quanto non esistenti nella realtà, usando vere e proprie macchie di colore. | © Wikipedia

Giovanni Fattori

Silvestro Lega
Silvestro Lega


Macchiaioli Artists at Tutt'Art@

Giovanni Lomi (1889-1969) | Post-Macchiaioli painter
Guglielmo Ciardi (1842-1917) | Veduta painter
Telemaco Signorini (1835-1901) | Macchiaioli Art Movement
Antonio Paoletti | Genre painter
Adolfo Tommasi | Macchiaioli painter
Niccolò Cannicci | Genre painter
Macchiaioli Art | History and Sitemap
Giovanni (Nino) Costa | Genre painter
Giovanni Boldini | Academic painter | The French Cityscapes
Raffaello Gambogi | Post-Macchiaioli painter
Lionello Balestrieri | Genre / Figurative / Impressionist painter
Aldo Mazzi, 1937 | Plein air painter
Gino Romiti | Post-Macchiaioli painter
Odoardo Borrani | Macchiaioli Art Movement
Giuseppe Faraone, 1954 | Impressionist Cityscape painter
Angiolo Tommasi | Macchiaioli Art Movement
Angiolo Tommasi | The Emigrants /Gli Emigranti, 1986
Renato Natali | Post-Macchiaioli painter
Giovanni Boldini | Genre painter
Mosè Bianchi | Genre/Macchiaioli painter
Benvenuto Benvenuti ~ Italian Divisionism/Neo-Impressionism style
Plinio Nomellini ~ Italian Divisionism/Neo-Impressionism
Moses Levy ~ Post-Macchiaioli painter
Silvestro Lega ~ Macchiaioli Art Movement
Federico Zandomeneghi ~ A Venetian between Impressionists
Antonio Ermolao Paoletti | Venetian genre scenes
Giuseppe De Nittis | Impressionist painter | Scuola di Resina
Giovanni Boldini | Academic painter | La Belle Epoque
Giovanni Fattori ~ Macchiaioli Art Movement
Vincenzo Cabianca (1827-1902) Macchiaioli painter
Cafiero Filippelli (1889-1973) | Macchiaioli painter
Ulvi Liegi (1858-1939) Post-Macchiaioli painter
Stefano Bruzzi (1835-1911) | Macchiaioli painter
Arturo Faldi (1856-1911) Macchiaioli painter
Francesco Gioli (1846-1922) Macchiaioli painter
Antonio Puccinelli (1822-1897) Macchiaioli painter


Telemaco Signorini