TIVOLI, Serafino de - b. 1826 Livorno, d. 1892 Firenze

Italian painter. After initial study of Literature at a religious private school in Florence, he began his artistic training under Károly Markó the Elder. He met Vito D’Ancona during the mid-1840s, and joined him in painting landscapes en plein air. In 1848 he fought as a Tuscan volunteer for Garibaldi in the Risorgimento. In 1855 his paintings, exhibited at the Florentine Promotrice exhibition, brought him to the attention of the artists who frequented the Caffè Michelangiolo in Florence (including those who would later become known as the Macchiaioli). In that same year he traveled to Paris, where he was greatly impressed by the paintings of the Barbizon school. He saw in their realism and powerful chiaroscuro a means of renewing art in the modern age. Upon his return to Florence he conveyed this new enthusiasm to his friends, who quickly adopted his ideas. In recognition of the influence he had on his fellow Florentine artists, Telemaco Signorini called him “the father of the macchia”.

De Tivoli made additional visits to Paris, and in 1863 he exhibited in the Salon des Refusés. In 1873 he moved to Paris, where he met such artists as Tissot and Pissarro, and became a friend of Degas. He returned to Florence in 1890, where he lived in relative isolation until his death in 1892.

A Pasture

The mid-nineteenth century in Italy was the period of the Risorgimento, the movement that culminated in Italian unification. That movement provided the political and cultural backdrop for one of the most important and influential groups in Italian art in the second half of the nineteenth century: the Macchiaioli. This group of landscape, portrait and genre painters, flourishing from about 1850 to 1880, was based on Florence. The core of the Macchiaioli consisted of eleven painters born between 1824 and 1838, most important of them among the older painters were Giovanni Fattori, Silvestro Lega, Serafino de Tivoli, and Vincenzo Cabianca, while Giuseppe Abbati and Telemaco Signorini belonged to the younger. There were some other artists associated with the group to varying extent, such as Guglielmo Ciardi, Giuseppe de Nittis, Federigo Zandomeneghi, and Giovanni Boldini. The last-named three all took their bearings from France, and eventually moved to Paris.

This is an early work by Tivoli, who was to become the ‘spiritual’ leader of the Macchiaioli movement. The artist, who later spent nearly two decades in Paris, seems already to have absorbed the influence of the French Barbizon School, combining its themes with Tuscan landscape traditions characterized by simplicity of topic and atmospheric effects. Earthy colours and solid structure of composition are the dominating elements in this pastoral scene.