Giovanni Fattori

Giovanni Fattori was born on 6 September 1825 in Livorno. Given his natural talents, his father decides to send him to the shop of painter Giuseppe Baldini. At age 21 she leaves Livorno to go to Florence and enroll at the Academy of Fine Arts, with shaky school achievements caused by the economic difficulties that force him to work. In 1848 he took part in the Risorgimento motos and was deeply impressed by the siege of Livorno of 1849 by the Austrians. This battle makes patriotism and strong political sentiment in him. Since 1850, Factor has entered a very exclusive tour, made up of anti-academic artists who meet at the Famous Caffè Michelangelo in Florence, where he meets Telemaco Signorini with whom he shares the poetica macchiaiola.

In the early sixties Fattori returned to Livorno, but was hit by the grave mourning of his wife's death, married only a year earlier. Deluded and bitter at personal and political level, however, has a professional turn when he was appointed, in 1869, professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence. In the Seventies he also goes to Paris but is not seduced by Impressionist painting, while the beloved Maremma becomes one of the privileged subjects of his work. His career is full of satisfactions and successes, and in 1890, after exhibiting in the most important galleries in Italy, he receives a special mention at the Paris Universal Exposition and subsequently also at international level. Giovanni Fattori dies in Florence on August 30, 1908, at 82 years of age.

Text © Monte dei Paschi di Siena, 2017