Castiglioncello 1883

Vincenzo Cabianca made this small oil on panel painting, Castiglioncello, sometime in the mid-19th century. In it we see a figure standing by a wall in a coastal landscape. Cabianca was a member of the Macchiaioli group of Italian painters. They were active in Tuscany in the second half of the 19th century, and they rejected the academic conventions then dominant in Italian art institutions. Instead, they painted outdoors to capture natural light and form in broken touches of colour known as ‘macchie,’ or spots. The Macchiaioli artists saw themselves as modern, and they associated their progressive painting style with the project of Italian unification. It’s no accident that they emerged in Florence, which briefly became the capital of the newly unified Italy in the 1860s. By studying the Macchiaioli and the institutions of art in their time, we can better understand the public role of art in the making of modern Italy.