Livorno, sixty works by Macchiaioli painters from a private collection on display at the Museo Civico

From October 23 to November 27, 2021, the “Giovanni Fattori” Civic Museum in Livorno is hosting the exhibition Pittori toscani dell’800. On display is a prestigious private collection, featuring more than sixty paintings by Macchiaioli and post-Macchiaioli painters (with artists such as Giovanni Fattori, Telemaco Signorini, Vittorio Corcos and others: Fattori’s there will also be a unique decorated cowbell, previously exhibited in the Leghorn museum, and numerous engravings) from the collection of Ettore Ermanno Morelli, who recently donated three important works to the museum and the city of Leghorn: two by artist Michele Gordigiani, a Self-Portrait and The Sartori Sisters and Miss Leight, and a Self-Portrait by Nino Costa.

As Livorno City Councilor for Culture Simone Lenzi explains, “there is a twofold merit to this exhibition being hosted at the Fattori Museum. The first, and most obvious, is that inherent in the works on display, valuable testimonies to a golden century of Tuscan painting. The second consists in the collection itself: the collection testifies to the exactness of the collector’s taste, the long passion that guides his eye for decades, hunting for paintings that each time expand and delimit at the same time a taste that is defined in choice. Once hung on the wall, the paintings in this private collection tell a coherent story of 19th-century Tuscan painting that it is a privilege to offer to the public eye.”

The exhibition begins with The Gathering of Roses by Giuseppe Abbati (Naples, 1836 - Florence, 1868), painted at the height of the Macchiaiolo period around 1860-1865, and where the characteristic spot painting is evident: brushstrokes of color and without any nuance of academic memory are juxtaposed with the light that illuminates the scene (the work embodies all the rules and style of the Macchiaioli). A few years later, when the Macchiaioli technique became softer, tending to soften in the contrasts of chiaroscuro, Odoardo Borrani (Pisa, 1833 - Florence, 1905) painted Houses along the Mugnone, a painting where the afternoon sunlight envelops the whole scene reflecting on the houses and thus scanning the various perspective effects with the foregrounds in shadow and the blue of the sky in the background (Borrani in 1870 painted several tablets with this same subject taken from various perspectives: the foreshortening in the exhibition is unpublished). Another unpublished work is Interior of a Church by Cristiano Banti (Santa Croce sull’Arno, 1824 - Montemurlo, 1904): it is the interior of the Basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome where Michelangelo’s Risen Christ is kept.

Also on display are The Washerwomen by Vincenzo Cabianca (Verona, 1827 - Rome, 1902), made in Sestri Levante in 1881: the coast of Tuscany and Liguria was assiduously frequented by many painters of the time (Signorini, Borrani, Gelati and Cabianca himself), and here painters studied the effects of light on the sea and on the stones of old churches. In this work, the artist took advantage of the light by painting the stones and freshly washed cloths white. Another painting that is surprising for its pictorial daring and its modernity of execution, which anticipates the 20th century by many years, is Spiaggia della Versilia by Eugenio Cecconi (Livorno, 1842 - Florence, 1903), whose protagonist is his friend Renato Fucini, intent on reading or taking notes. One can see in the painting Abbati’s influence on the young painter, whom he met and frequented in Castiglioncello at Diego Martelli’s house. The sober, lean brushstrokes express an extraordinary synthesis in tone and volume, creating an endless space of sunlit beach in such a way that the figure of Fucini does not disturb the viewer with his presence. In the shadow of the hut is instead a work by the painter, Welsh by birth but very Italian by culture, Llewelyn Lloyd (Livorno, 1879 - Florence, 1949). A lover of light and chromatic contrasts, he painted seascapes and landscapes in which nature is intact but moldable by this master of chromatic synthesis. His Elba and Livorno coasts are memorable: just near Castiglioncello he painted with exceptional chromatic sense the hut that was on the property of Michele Gordigiani, who in turn treated the same subject.

Ludovico Tommasi (Leghorn, 1866 - 1941) is the author of Tramonto ai Bagni executed around 1920: he depicts with expressive vigor a view of the Ardenza in Leghorn, with bathers leaving the beach: the sky and the background, low on the horizon, are perfectly attuned to the lights of the sunset crossed by clouds that reinforce the reality of a stupendous and nostalgic vision. The Cascine of 1899 is painted by Ulvi Liegi (Livorno, 1859-1939): it is a view of the Arno embankment in front of Florence’s Cascine Park with figures animating the scene. A happy synthesis of landscape in a still Macchiaioli taste, contaminated by the expressionism that in later years would become his pictorial hallmark. Also emerging in the collection is the unpublished Cavalli al pascolo (Horses grazing ) by Mario Puccini (Livorno, 1869 - Florence 1920), executed around 1918: a rural scene animated by grazing horses and peasants immersed in uncultivated vegetation with a background of pine forests and hills against a sky lit by the author’s typical blue. The painting is painted from life, probably in Campolecciano, simple but refined of the essential forms and various planes that fade to the horizon: the green and yellow glazed colors create an extraordinary chromatic phantasmagoria.

An excellent small painting by Francesco Vinea (Forlì, 1845 - Florence, 1902), Portrait of Silvestro Lega, is striking for its perfect execution: made in 1868, when he was following his Macchiaioli master-friends, it is of extraordinary quality and reveals his uncommon pictorial qualities. Unfortunately, his later choices were others lost in painting genre sketches, with musketeers, servants and tavern interiors according to the taste of Anglo-Saxon and French merchants and collectors. Historically curious is the tiny tablet by Giovanni Lessi (Florence, 1852 - 1922) representing The Study of Master Vito D’Ancona painted in 1876. Formerly the property of Mario Galli, patron and collector of the Macchiaioli, the small painting depicts D’Ancona in his studio while painting one of his most beautiful nudes. Said nude became part of the prestigious Rosselli collection. Serafino De Tivoli (Leghorn, 1826 - Florence, 1892) after Macchia’s long experience in Florence, painted in France the crepuscular work The Port of Rouen in which the experience of the school of Barbison, which the artist attended for a few years, is also blended with that of Macchiaioli. Another painting of the same port but executed from a different point of view is known.

This purely “Tuscan” collection, however, also includes works by artists from other areas of Italy, including Giuseppe Palizzi ’s (Lanciano, 1812 - France, 1888) Shepherd Boys, a rural scene dominated by the two shepherd boys immersed in a luminous nature that represents thepinnacle of his pictorial realism, and Carlo Pittara’s Study of Cows and Porch, a painting belonging to the second period of his painting, following his parenthesis of study in France (his return to Turin corresponds to an evolution toward a more driven verism aimed at nature and its more peasant aspects): this scene with cows returning to the barn bathed in the beautiful light of sunset recalls Macchiaioli painting filtered, however, by an elegant realism closer to De Nittis. Finally, the exhibition’s surprising jewel is Raffaello Sernesi’s album of drawings: it contains 47 pages of writings and drawings dating back to the beginning of his extraordinary if brief artistic history. Dozens of figures, anatomies, faces “in relief” that will be used for the minting of some coins follow one another in these pages of rare perfection.

The exhibition can be visited with a museum ticket: full 6 euros, reduced 4 euros, free for children 6 years old, minors residing in the Municipality of Livorno, 100 percent disabled with accompanying person, journalists. For information visit the Fattori Museum website.

Pictured is a work by Eugenio Cecconi.

Livorno, sixty works by Macchiaioli painters from a private collection on display at the Museo Civico

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