The Grandmother's Lesson

The painting "The Grandmother's Lesson" by Silvestro Lega (1826-1895) reflects the crucial phase of the 19th-century transit between atelier painting and real-life painting, with a particular Enlightenment conception based on Romantic and, later, Verist models. In this context, his work moves from early Macchiaioli to new types of artistic expression, preferring domestic interior scenes. The painting depicts an elderly woman intent on tutoring a little girl, perhaps her granddaughter, as she repeats her lesson in a bourgeois interior. Through the depiction of the environment and the gestures and expressions of the figures, the painter manages to evoke psychological subtleties and universal feelings. The light that penetrates the room, fades over the faces of the two characters, emphasizing the white collar of the grandmother's dress, the pages of the book, and the knitting laid out on the basket. The precision of the drawing decreases in favor of describing details in the half-light and the rendering of the fabrics and hair. The brushwork is dense, with a full-bodied layering and opulent color, even in the relatively small range of tones. The subject portrayed, as always in Lega’s work, becomes an incomparable testimony to an era and a society. An artist of rare emotional intensity, he makes the feelings of affection vibrate along with the underlying vitality of the soul.