Fine painting depicting two peasants intent on an amusing reading at their home.
Appreciable the painter's exquisite technique in depicting the various characters
Signed at lower right
Provenance: Finarte Auction 1977
Measurements: Framed H 82 x W 65 x D 4 / Paper H 55 x W 37 cm
Enrolled at a very young age at the Academy of Fine Arts in Modena, from his earliest essays on historical subjects he welcomed the suggestion of the realist lesson of the Modenese painter Giovanni Muzzioli. Having obtained the Poletti painting prize in 1880, he had the opportunity to continue his studies first in Rome and later in Florence, where he moved permanently in 1884.
During the 1880s he inaugurated a repertoire of genre scenes that guaranteed him an extraordinary market fortune and the favor of international patrons.
Functional to his painting practice is his intense activity as a photographer, carried out mainly in the studio with the help of models in peasant and commoner costumes. Starting from the photographic images, the artist recreates a joyful and idyllic image of the Italian rural world, devoid of any accent of social denunciation, but appreciated by foreign tourists to the point of urging the serial production of the same fortunate stereotypes still in the first decades of the twentieth century.