Verismo, a school of thought that also finds valuable expression in the figurative arts, established itself in Italy in the second half of the 19th century, alongside Verismo literature.
The characteristics of Verismo in painting
In both literature and painting, Verismo represents a movement of fundamental importance for 19th-century Italian culture.
This movement offers an authentic representation of reality, laying the foundations for Neorealist cinema on the one hand and influencing the way society is represented in the arts on the other.
Verismo cannot be defined as a unified movement, but rather as an attitude of rejection of the academic and romantic heritage, with a strong aspiration to represent the visible in a documentary manner, even with tones of social denunciation.
Realist painters capture an authentic image of everyday life, often focusing on the challenges faced by the working classes and favoring Italian regional environments afflicted by various forms of poverty.
Italian Verismo painters
Italian Verismo represents Italy’s response to the need for art that portrayed reality objectively and without embellishment, similar to French Realism, but with its own specific characteristics linked to the cultural and political context of Italy at the time.
Following the proclamation of national unity (March 1861), artists who supported this perspective spread throughout Italy. Below are some Verismo painters who left an important testimony of the period they were living in.
The Verist Painters of Northern Italy
The political and social conditions of Italy and Lombardy at the end of the 1800s, along with rapid industrial development, led artists to focus on social issues, a central theme in the iconography of Verist painting. Works by artists such as Filippini, Segantini, and Giovanni Sottocornola (Milan, 1855-1917), like The Exit of the Female Workers from the Pirelli Factory (pictured below), show a particular attention to labor, both in the fields and in the city.
The Exit of the Female Workers from the Pirelli Factory
The works of Morbelli, who depicts the elderly of the Pio Albergo Trivulzio, testify to the marginalization of the poorest classes.
Influences of Italian Verismo are evident in Lombard painting with artists such as Angelo Morbelli, Ambrogio Alciati (Vercelli, 1878 – Milan, 1929), Emilio Longoni, and Eugenio Spreafico, who describes bucolic life.
Ugo Gheduzzi (Crespellano, 1853 – Turin, 1925), an Italian painter and set designer linked to the Verismo movement, is characterized by a realistic attention to rural life and the people working the land, capturing with sensitivity the everyday moments of peasant life.
Egidi MadeinItaly paintings in the gallery
A work on canvas by Ugo Gheduzzi is available for sale on our website, offering an opportunity to discover his authentic and engaging style.
Ugo Gheduzzi
Egidi MadeinItaly works in the gallery
Our gallery features a work by the painter Eugenio Spreafico, who in 1881 became involved with Verismo and joined the group of Monza Realists, which included Mosè Bianchi, Emilio Borsa, and Pompeo Mariani, among others.
Eugenio Spreafico painting
In Piedmont with the Rivara School.
In Veneto, the paintings of Giacomo Favretto and in Tuscany the Macchiaioli with Telemaco Signorini, Plinio Nomellini, and Giovanni Fattori.
However, the trend that most closely resembles a true movement developed in southern Italy, particularly in Naples.
Among the leading exponents of Neapolitan artistic renewal were Filippo Palizzi and Domenico Morelli.
Both taught at the Royal Institute of Fine Arts, which brought together the leading interpreters of Verismo art from central and southern Italy, perpetuating the anti-academic research promoted by the two masters.
Domenico Morelli
Domenico Morelli (Naples, 1923-1901) drew inspiration from 17th-century Neapolitan realism and devoted himself mainly to figure painting.
Filippo Palizzi
Filippo Palizzi (Vasto, 1818 – Naples, 1899) abandoned the academic style and turned to the study of reality, focusing on landscapes and animal painting, and more rarely on scenes of everyday life.
Their dictates were followed by a plethora of artists, creating a cultural and commercial axis between Naples and Paris, promoting the knowledge and success of southern Verismo in Europe.
Other Verismo painters
The early works of the 1860s and 1870s by the sculptor Vincenzo Gemito (Naples, 1852-1929) and the painter Antonio Mancini (Rome, 1852-1930), pupils of Stanislao Lista and Morelli, show an “authentic poetics of truth.”
Egidi MadeinItaly works in the gallery
Our gallery has a delightful tempera on paper by Antonio Mancini, archived at the Antonio Mancini Archive, depicting a typical female figure rendered in pastel with skillful and swift strokes, in which the face is clearly distinguishable, but the whole borders on abstraction.
Signed paste on paper by Antonio Mancini
Vincenzo Volpe
Vincenzo Volpe (Grottaminarda 1855 – Naples 1929) another pupil of Domenico Morelli, was mainly a painter of figures, such as the delicate portrait of a young woman in our gallery of ancient art, landscapes, and genre scenes.
Thanks to his keen spirit of observation, he was a sensitive interpreter of the Neapolitan artistic environment of his time.
The bucolic images of Francesco Paolo Michetti made him famous for his representations of folklore and peasant life in Abruzzo.
Francesco Paolo Michetti
Francesco Paolo Michetti (Tocco da Casauria, 1851 – Francavilla al Mare, 1929) was an Italian painter, sculptor, and photographer. He began by imitating naturalism and visionary realism.
Young and promising, his work was immediately noticed.
Rural Abruzzo, with its unspoiled nature, was his main source of inspiration.
Like many painters of the time, from 1871 Michetti also became interested in photography, first to study the subjects of his paintings and then as a new means of expression, working directly on the matrices.
Michetti’s international fame was such that on April 4, 1909, Vittorio Emanuele III of Italy appointed him senator of the Kingdom.
