Great Maneuvers

"Great Maneuvers" by Giovanni Fattori (1825-1908) represents a crucial junction between the visual culture of the mature 19th century and the novelties of 20th century painting. Fattori represents a theme very dear to him, that of military life, but does not exalt the heroic dimension, but the daily. The artist banished all rhetoric from this theme, treating the scene as a simple episode of contemporary life, marked by the alternation of groups of soldiers and the landscape. This painting, belonging to the artist's late production, reflects the author's disillusionment with the Risorgimento dream and the results of the unification of Italy. In the vast compositional structure, which renews the schemes of history painting by capturing the subjects from behind, every single episode is delimited by a contour line that seems to imprison the figures, immortalizing them, without any rhetoric, in their daily drama.