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Dimensions: 58.4 by 173.2 cm., 23 by 68 1/4 in.
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Provenance: PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION
Probably, Soci Fratellanza (bought directly from the artist in 1865)
Purchased by the family of the present owners circa 1920; thence by descent
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Exhibited: Probably, Vienna, Weltausstellung, Esposizione Universale di Vienna, 1873, no. 222 (entitled L'alzaia, Cascine de Firenze)
Probably, Florence, Esposizione della Promotrice di Firenze, 1875, no. 441 (entitled L'azaia)
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Literature: Probably, Arte e Socialità in Italia: dal realismo al simbolismo 1865-1915, exh. cat. Palazzo della Permanente, Milano, 1979, p. 204, listed
Probably, Piero Dini, ed., Telemaco Signorini, exh. cat., Villa Forini, 1987, pp. 68-9, listed
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Notes: Painted circa 1865, Telemaco Signorini's impressive juxtaposition of five straining bargees, joined by ropes, pulling an unseen barge along the Arno with a dapper gentleman idly strolling through the fashionable Cascine Park with his young daughter is among the artist's most monumental and compelling works. Hidden from public view for almost a century, the emergence of this work, which has until now only been recorded by name and description, marks an exceptionally exciting and rare re-discovery not only of a major large-scale work in Signorini's oeuvre and within the Macchiaioli movement but of a significant essay on the class divide in Italian society during the second half of the nineteenth century.
The present work surpasses the aim of the macchia ('sketch') by exploring the expressive possibilities of a low viewpoint, tonal solidity and narrative. Signorini's deep admiration for 17th and 18th Century artists and in particular for Caravaggio's use of chiaroscuro and light effects to model his subjects is evident in the sculptural quality of the figures hauling the boat against the current of the Arno (fig. 1). Unsurprisingly, in his brief autobiography of 1897, Signorini describes these figures as 'quasi al vero' ('almost real'). This realism ties in closely with contemporary movements in French art, which Signorini had studied on his trip to Paris in 1861 when he absorbed the styles and techniques of Corot and the Barbizon painters such as Courbet and Daubigny. Like the Barbizon painters, Signorini and his fellow Macchiaioli would execute quick sketches (or macchia) en plein air but compose and paint their finished compositions in the studio. He began to incorporate the Parisian artists' luminary effects and working class subjects into his own compositions, admiring their strong tonal contrasts and truthful depictions of marginal characters in society.
L'Alzaia, a powerful yet unsentimental comment on the conditions of the working classes, marks the apogee of Signorini's social realist works. While an underlying interest in the social situations of the lower classes is detectable throughout his oeuvre, it was from 1862 that Signorini's compositions became preoccupied with social structures and critical realism. The initial inspiration for L'Azaia almost certainly came from Michele Cammarrano's Ozio e lavoro (Idleness and Work) of 1863 (fig. 2), which plays on the dichotomy between the hard working lower classes and the leisured gentry. Signorini, the first Italian painter to embrace photography as a compositional tool, adopts the same narrative as Cammarrano but is able to evoke a far more powerful response from the viewer through his use of space and perspectival construction. The viewer takes in the scene from the position of a passer-by and thereby becomes complicit in the action. The stark immediacy of the silhouetted figures, set as if in a frieze, are magnified by the low viewpoint allowing them to tower almost ape-like over the slender figures of the well-heeled gentleman and girl. The ragged worn clothes and circular hats of the workers alienate them from the vertical top hat and elegant dress of the figures on the left. As the haulers tug resignedly against the strong pull of the ropes, lost in their exhaustion, the young girl in her white Sunday dress turns to stare at these strange creatures; the little dog stands between the men and his master as if to urge them to keep their distance; the gentleman meanwhile walks on, consciously disregarding their plight.
A reduced version of this work, painted by Signorini in 1867 was sold in the same year to the Scottish painter and amateur dealer James Lawson Wingate.
