Luigi Garibbo 1858 - Italy, View Of Florence, Young Woman - 19th Century Tempera Painting

Luigi Garibbo (1782–1869)
Young Woman with a Broken Pitcher. View of Florence from the Hills.
Tempera on paper, 1858

This warm-toned painting transports us at first glance to the sunlit south: ochre earth, maritime vegetation, and a city crowned with the orange roofs of terracotta tiles. We are looking toward Florence beneath its summer sky. In the foreground, a barefoot young woman wipes her face as she contemplates her broken jar, from which spills the water she has just drawn at the spring visible at the left of the composition. The broken pitcher belongs to the well-known eighteenth-century repertoire of symbols alluding to the loss of virginity.

Through the sun-scorched vegetation, we appreciate the painter’s deft touch, alternating small flat washes with a multitude of short, insistent strokes. As the landscape recedes, the brush seems to grow calmer, yielding to softer hues and more suggested contours.

• Luigi Garibbo, Genoa 1782 – Florence 1869
• Signed lower left: L. Garibbo 1858
• Original frame. Bubble glass. Probably never unframed.
• Frame size: 37 × 28 cm
• Sight within the mat: 27 × 18 cm

Born in Genoa in 1782, Luigi Garibbo trained at the Ligustica Academy of Fine Arts before producing copperplate engravings, sometimes alone and sometimes with the celebrated Milanese engraver Paolo Fumagalli. He subsequently adopted watercolor—a technique then considered minor—ideal for swiftly capturing light and atmosphere. This approach, often paired with pencil sketches, fueled a prolific output of lasting artistic and documentary value: it records the appearance of Genoa prior to the sweeping transformations of the early nineteenth century.

Garibbo rose to prominence in 1822 by circulating two engravings depicting grave events that had taken place in Genoa. Drawn to Florence, where he settled permanently around 1830, he taught watercolor and perspective to Princess Charlotte Bonaparte. He also authored a treatise on aeronautics and refined the camera lucida, enabling the drawing of distant subjects.

During his Florentine period, he continued to paint views of his native city, faithful to his original sketches and now valuable documents of a rapidly changing urban landscape. In 1850 he embarked on large panoramas—among them one of Naples—but this ambitious venture ruined him. His final years were marked by poverty and increasing blindness. Shortly before his death in 1869, he donated to the city of Genoa two albums containing more than 180 engravings and watercolors, today preserved at the Palazzo Rosso.

Notes:
• Luigi Garibbo, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Rome, Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana.
• DocSAI, “Luigi Garibbo,” Musei di Genova.
• Federica Costella, “Un precursore a Genova: Luigi Garibbo e la pittura ‘En plein air’ (PDF),” in La Casana, no. 3, Carige, 2011. URL consulted 18 May 2018 (archived from the original URL on 7 August 2016).
• Pegli Picta – Opere, Lions Club Pegli.
• “Garibbo Luigi,” Istituto Documentazione Arte Ligure 800–900.
• Musei di Strada Nuova, En plein air: Luigi Garibbo e il vedutismo tra Genova e Firenze. Exhibition catalogue, Palazzo Rosso, Genoa, Silvana Editoriale, 2011.

Bibliography:
EN PLEIN AIR. LUIGI GARIBBO E IL VEDUTISMO TRA GENOVA E FIRENZE, Elisabetta Papone; Andreana Serra. Silvana Editoriale, 2011.


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