Farming landscape with cows

The composition is balanced in a double diagonal: the first, the most evident and immediate, is formed by the two cows, one standing and the other crouching on the grass, in the lower right, and the village that extends gently sloping down a hill, top left. The other diagonal is represented by the green spaces between these two poles. The brushstrokes are excited, fast, skilful in the transcoloring of tones and atmospheres, in the iconographic definitions with few elements drawn only in the animals to accentuate the solidity of the positions. But Ligabue often cannot resist adding a narrative detail that attracts attention and, therefore, in a certain sense, stops the contemplation of the viewer of the work and gives the observer a different rhythm. In this case it is the different shape of the horns of one cow from the other: upward those of the standing cow and downwards for the standing cow.