In the 1850s and 1860s, the figurative culture of Lombardy gradually moved away from the conventions of composition, of aesthetics and of narrative of the previous period.
Even history painting, which had always been considered to be the most important and significant form of painting, one that was capable of playing a moral, educational and political role, found its dominance coming into question. Instead of the great exploits and the grand themes celebrated in Italian literature and history – until recently the case of the works of Francesco Hayez – preference now went to “genre” scenes, subjects plucked from contemporary everyday life.
However the change was not restricted to the subject and the rhythm of the compositions: painters now also gradually abandoned the artificial, theatrical colours and light effects that had been a characteristic of paintings of historical subjects, preferring a more truthful representation of the gestures they painted and of the relationships between lights and colours.
This sense of natural vision was also reflected in landscape painting – in fact, even more so, as artists started engaging in more systematic, conscious experiments with the practice of painting en plein air, i.e. in the open air, studying how lights and shadows mutate their colours in real life, together with the atmospheric effects of different times of day and in the different seasons of the year.
Works’ structures became simpler; the strong contrasts between light and shadow disappeared and the caricatures that had once populated landscapes and urban scenes became increasingly rare.
Artists made a conscious effort to restore a sense of immediacy and airiness to their canvases, abandoning the previous focus on the description of minute details. Leafy tree branches, bodies of water, the outlines of mountains and the figures that populate landscapes were now represented with a sweeping, synthesised painting that aimed at conveying to the observer the same emotional and visual sensation that the artist himself had experienced, the impression made on him by the relationship between colours and between the values of light and shade observed in direct contact with reality.