Art: The New-Found Island

The violent throes of political unification came late to Italy: only a century ago, musketry crackled across the gentle countryside depicted in Renaissance landscapes, and pictures of red-shirted Risorgimento Leader Garibaldi hung beside Crucifixion scenes on many an Italian’s wall. During this era of foment, a group of Tuscan artists banded together at the Cafe Michelangelo in Florence to protest the Florentine Academy’s insistence upon slick studio painting that absented itself from what was going on. These artists became known as the macchiaioli, who painted with splashes, macchie, of color.

Fra Angelica’s Bequest. Half of the original 14 who showed at Florence were soldiers. Using portable easels and small canvases, they painted things that academicians shuddered at—prostitutes, troop maneuvers and barefoot peasantry. Then they turned to the subject matter that early French impressionism grew fat upon: landscapes populated by rocks and sheep, woodsmen warming in a shack, wheat harvests, the faces of peasants—all done in the subdued tonalities of their dulcet quattrocento ancestors, Fra Angelico, Domenico Veneziano and Piero della Francesca. This week in Manhattan, a show of 92 works goes on view at the American Federation of Arts Gallery; to many viewers, it will be a pleasant new-found island (see color) in the apparently empty seas of Italian art between the baroque period of the late 18th century and the futurism of the early 20th.

Chief among the macchiaioli was Giovanni Fattori of Leghorn, called “The Etruscan” for his bold, brusque colorism. His vision was acute and reportorial. He sought out such scenes as a cavalryman dragged across a field by his horse or oxen idly sniffing an oddly crumpled hat, the only sign of life in a devastated battleground. Another leader was Giovanni Boldini from Ferrara, who traveled through Spain with Degas and later settled in Paris to paint exquisitely mannered portraits. A third was Vincenzo Cabianca from Verona, who loaded his canvas with oil until its scumbled surface resembled earthen ware, yet caught the rich visual effect of sun-drenched landscape.

Modigliani’s Legacy. The macchiaioli were too far from the mainstream of modern art to be noticed at once. But their pupils made good. One who studied under Fattori was an Italian Jew from Leghorn named Amedeo Modigliani. Although he is best recalled for his expressionistic nudes, there was a time when Modigliani painted fleeting visions of the unpopulated flowery banks of Tuscany with a matchless skill that paid homage to his teacher. Thus Tuscan impressionism, so eagerly seeking to become a part of European art, fed Paris its best pupils, and Italian impressionism became, until now, a forgotten page in the history of art.