The exhibition, Fattori and Naturalism in Tuscany, is the first in a full program of events that will continue throughout all of 2008 and into early 2009, during which the Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, together with the Soprintendenza Speciale per il Patrimonio Storico, Artistico, ed Etnoantropologico e per il Polo Museale della città di Firenze – Galleria d’arte moderna,will celebrate the most famous of the Macchiaioli, the painter of the epic deeds of the Risorgimento and of views of the Maremma.  He died a century ago in a hall of the Accademia di Belle Arti, the institution on Via Ricasoli that he had frequented for 60 years, first as a student and later as a teacher. 

GIOVANNI FATTORI, Horse branding in Maremma

The exhibition, curated by Francesca Dini, compares, for the first time, the most famous of the Macchiaioli painters with the most illustrious artists who inherited the innovative legacy of the Macchia and interpreted its themes and aspirations in a naturalistic – middle class way, in tune with the evolution of French and European culture.

With the 35 mainly large-sized works, some of which have never been seen in public before, the exhibition, in perfect harmony with the Villa Bardini garden, highlights affinities, shows differences, even important ones, and thus restores the true relationship between the master, the leader of the movement who never aspired to be so, and his younger art companions, that is, between the protagonists of a beautiful and fleeting painting season where the Risorgimento idealism was to grieve for the disillusions of the post unity period and the idea of an imminent progress that was soon tinged with longing. Eleven masterpieces by Fattori are compared with splendid paintings by Francesco and Luigi Gioli, Eugenio Cecconi, Adolfo and Angiolo Tommasi, Ruggero Panerai, Guglielmo Micheli, Egisto Ferroni, Niccolò Cannicci,  Raffaello Sorbi.


FRANCESCO GIOLI, Spring (1879), oil on canvas, cm 50,5 x 132,5

The first section of the exhibition is dedicated to Fattori, defined by Oscar Ghiglia as “A great painter of nature”. Here are famous paintings like “Horse Branding in Maremma”, “The Harvest of the Hay in Maremma”, “Tombolo, Horses to Flight”, “Viale Principe Amedeo”, which illustrate Fattori’s long and innovative artistic path, his formal rigour, his faithfulness to the principles of realism, the artist’s extreme humbleness before any manifestation of nature. The following four sections (Painting in the Fields, ‘Courtly’ Naturalism, the Maremma, Urban Views) show the most common themes found in Fattori’s as well as in the Naturalist painters’ works: splendid paintings such as “The Lassoing” by Eugenio Cecconi, “Spring” by Francesco Gioli, and “A Walk in San Gallo Square” by Ruggero Panerai. They portray the Tuscany of small but important things, a humble everyday life, beautiful virgin lands, anonymous labour, busy streets and squares and rustic idylls.