picture plane and draw the eye inward . Pforr flattened out his perspective and simplified his shading to give his paintings the look of medieval illuminations . In his “ St . George and the Dragon ” ( 1811 ) neither the saint nor the damsel in distress show much emotion . They , the horse , and the dragon are as motionless as statues .
which allowed for much freer and faster painting . The Impressionist movement was a logical outgrowth of the convenient new materials , but so was the Macchiaioli , which emerged in Florence about 20 years before Claude Monet painted his milestone work “ Impression : Sunrise .”
The Nazarenes influenced a parallel movement in Italy , il purismo , or Purism . The great French painter Ingres , who lived
Franz Pforr
“ St . George and the Dragon ,” 1811 in Rome at the height of the Nazarene movement and whose long life began in the era of Neoclassicism and ended in the Age of Impressionism , adopted some of their principles . But they were little known to the rest of Europe . In Germany itself , the tyrannical principles of the Academy remained in force . Some of the Pre-Raphaelites may have been aware of the Nazarenes , but their models were Fra Angelico and Piero della Francesca , not Friedrich Overbeck and Franz Pforr .
MACCHIAIOLI
The most dramatic revolution in 19th century painting was in the new art supply industry . In 1841 , oil paint first became available in collapsible tin tubes , helping to make painting portable and more spontaneous . In addition to the old round brushes with soft squirrel-hair bristles , artists could now employ flat brushes with tough hog ’ s hair bristles ,
Claude Monet
“ Impression : Sunrise ,” 1872
Like “ Impressionism ,” the term “ Macchiaioli ” was coined by a hostile art critic and later adopted with pride by the artists themselves . The noun macchia literally means “ spot ” or “ stain ,” but macchiato ( a term Starbucks has adopted for their “ caffè macchiato ,” with its “ stained ” look ) can also mean “ sparkling .” Like the Viennese and French academies , the Florentine art schools favored muted colors and velvety transitions of light to dark , or chiaroscuro ( literally meaning “ light-dark ”). Younger artists wondered why they couldn ’ t use patches of bright colors that shine against each other .
The original Macchiaioli were passionate revolutionaries , not only in painting , but in politics . All the artists favored the unification of Italy , just as some of the Nazarenes , like Pforr , longed for the unification of Germany . Beginning in
Rafaello Sernesi
“ Roofs in the Sun ,” 1861
48 ART CHOWDER MAGAZINE