The history: from Macchiaioli in Post-Macchiaioli

The term (Macchiaioli) was coined in 1862 by a reviewer of the "Gazzetta del Popolo" which so called those painters who around 1855 had given rise to an anti-academic renewal of Italian painting in the realist sense.

At the Caffè Michelangelo in Florence, around the critic Diego Martelli, a group of painters gives life to the movement of macchiaioli. This movement would like to renew the national artistic culture. The poetic realist macchiaiola is opposed to Romanticism, Neoclassicism and the academic purism, and argues that the image of the real is a contrast of “macchie” (patches) of color and chiaroscuro, obtained through a technique called black mirror, using a mirror blackened with allowing smoke to enhance the contrasts of light within the painting. The art of these painters was to "make the impressions they received from the truth by means of spots (patches) of colors of light and dark".

Among the leading exponents of the movement: Giovanni Fattori, Silvestro Lega and Telemaco Signorini whose paintings are exhibited at the Gallery of Modern Art Florence (Palazzo Pitti): http://www.polomuseale.firenze.it/musei/?m=artemoderna

The “Caffe Michelangelo” still exists and is located in Via Cavour n. 61 (near Piazza del Duomo): http://www.caffemichelangiolo.com

The current gave rise to that of the post-Macchiaioli, that the painters of Tuscan origin who were active, referring to the painting of "macchia” (patches) between 1880 and 1930. The best knowninItalyand abroad: John Bartolena, Leonetto Cappiello, Vittorio Matteo Corcos, Michele Paris, Oscar Ghiglia, Francesco Gioli, Luigi Gioli, Emanuele Costa, Guglielmo Micheli, Pliny Nomellini, Adolfo Tommasi, Angiolo Tommasi, Ludovico Tommasi, Lorenzo Viani.