Art e Dossier

This painting, done at Caglio during the autumn of 1885 achieved an almost unexpected success: a gold medal in Amsterdam, enthusiastic reviews in the press and it was purchased by the Italian Government for the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome – albeit at a modest price with respect to the costs Segantini incurred in painting. The model in the foreground was paid by the artist who had also signed a contract for the animals – in order to be painted they had to be kept in the field and returned every evening. The fence marked the divider between the pastures of Caglio and those of Sorenberg, the adjacent village. The vast landscape of plains and plateaus conveys a sense of the infinite, while the sky, reduced to a narrow backlit line creates the melancholy atmosphere of a day nearing its end, the sense of nature’s passiveness in the face of its inescapable destiny. The entire composition is arranged around a diagonal line on which attention is focused and towards which the parallel lines of the sky, mountains, plateau and the plain with its contrasting light converge. The time is suggested by the shadows of the cows and the intense light on their backs. Together with the entire landscape they seem to embody the epic of farm life, its beauty and its misery – through the placid harmony of the colors and precise brushstrokes.

This large painting, probably Segantini’s most famous work was shown for the first time at the Brera Triennale in 1892 – close to the ethereal Maternity by Previati – where it enjoyed a great success. It was considered the first public appearance of Divisionism in Italy: in fact, the use of the Divisionist technique creates a particular tension between the areas of light and shadow, thus accentuating the symbolic power of the image. The small ochre, yellow, gray and whitish, unmixed brushstrokes nervously render the shapes on a tactile, sensual surface. The composition’s structure is based on a sequence of parallel horizontal planes that are broken by the play of the vertical elements of the door on the right. The emotional and mysterious intimacy of the scene comes from dialectic opposites, of Caravaggesque origin, between the indirect, artificial light coming from the lantern that hangs from the ceiling and the darkness of the barn. The two mothers (human and animal) are put together with a dual meaning, humble and everyday as well as spiritual and symbolic. The cow at the manger seems to forget her calf asleep on the hay, and the sleepy young farmwoman holds her child on her lap as if the two mothers practically do not realize that they are participating in the eternal cycle of life.

As A.-P. Quinsac wrote about Segantini: “The loss of his mother at such a young age explains both the centrality of the theme of motherhood in his work as well as the ambivalence in his portrayals of it. For him, as for many of his contemporaries, motherhood is the primary and sublime mission of woman, the ‘raison d’être’ of her existence.” The lustful, hence are women who, in a moralistic view, must be punished because they renounce maternity and give themselves over to sensual pleasures that bring no fruit (perhaps an allusion to “Sappho’s sisters”). Segantini’s scene, with its Art Nouveau flair, has a particular dreamlike intensity and a sense of eternity created by the deliberate lack of perspective rules in which depth is cancelled out by the shadowed area (bluish-purple and silvery gray) between the foreground and the mountain. There is a pair of floating white figures in the foreground and another two in the back, facing inexistent poles and raised towards the Nirvana from the trees that bend towards their hair. Their destiny and redemption are about to be completed in that terrifying landscape of ice, broken by dead trees in the mountain setting which is none other that Maloja and the valley.

Even though this landscape cannot be traced to any definite topographical reference, the detailed description of its features rendered through the use complementary colors does indeed perfectly capture the immobility of crystalline light that is typical of the Alps in summer. The brushstrokes, divided into long filaments or short, nervously juxtaposed touches create a tactile surface that is amazingly rich in color: the deep blue and vermillion for the sky; the ultramarine blue and dark red for the dress; the ochre and white for the grass, stone or branch. The sculptural figure of the shepherd girl is in perfect harmony with the nature around her. She is Barbara Uffer, known as Baba, his model from the Savognin period – a young servant girl whom Segantini saw as the incarnation of the typical mountain beauty. The symbolic message that gives meaning to the painting is totally unrelated to the social iconography. Rather, it alludes to human resignation and acceptance of the laws of nature that unite the girl’s existential solitude with that of the grazing sheep and the birds in the sky.

In this painting Segantini demonstrates his acceptance of symbolism through the allegorical and universal content of the theme, and the Art Nouveau decoration characterized by light, curving lines inspired by Japanese prints. The naturalism of the maternal scene is only apparent: in reality the mother’s pose is uncomfortable and artificial, and the child is unreal and evanescent. This figurative mannerism contributes to the fantastic nature of the vision that is also accentuated by his graphic rendering of the sky and birch with the twisted trunk that seems visceral and certainly not naturalistic. The background is the lake of Sils in the Engadin where Segantini had moved with his family in 1894. The iconography of the painting seems to have sprung from a fusion of the motif of the Virgin Enthroned and the Judeo-Christian Tree of Life, triple symbol of knowledge, evil and death that is also identified with Jesse’s Tree (that heralds the Passion of Christ). There is a second version of this painting, oil on paper, that had been commissioned by the same collector and is now in Budapest.

The unnatural or “evil” mothers are those who renounced their maternal role and hence are being punished and tormented until the redemption offered by their unborn children who are imagined as hidden amidst the arid, icy land. The theme comes from a text, in verse, attributed to Pahgiavali, an Indian Buddhist hermit who never actually existed. The famous librettist, Luigi Illiaca supposedly translated the poem from the Sanskrit but in reality he was the author. Maternity, identified in nature itself, source of life was one of the central themes of Italian Decadentism and Symbolism, from Pascoli to D’Annunzio, and linked to Judeo-Christian based misogyny typical of the final decades of the nineteenth century. This masterpiece, that is one of a series of four paintings begun in 1891, illustrates the myth of the redemption of woman through the acceptance of motherhood as embodied in the sensual and fascinating female figure (reminiscent of the women painted by Max Klinger or the Pre-Raphaelite, Hunt) contorted upon tree branches raised towards the sky, racked with suffering with the child’s head at her breast.

This is the painting with the most obvious Pre-Raphaelite influence – especially the second generation (Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Watts). The complexity of the painting, that describes the tiniest details with an obsessive horror vacui explains its success among the German and Viennese Secessionists. Segantini explained the painting in a symbolic key in a letter to Tumiati dated 11 October 1896: “[…] represents the playful and carefree love of the female and the thoughtful love of the male, bound together by the natural impulse of youth and spring. The path they are on is narrow and flanked by blooming rhododendrons, they are dressed in white (the pictorial portrayal of lilies). The red rhododendrons say eternal life, the evergreen Swiss pines respond with eternal hope. An angel, a mystical, suspicious angel, spreads a large wing over the mysterious fountain of life. The live water springs from the live rock, both symbols of eternity. The sun floods the scene, the sky is blue; with the white, green and red I would delight my eyes in smooth, harmonious rhythms: and it was especially with the greens that I mean to signify this…”

The three scenes of the Life, Nature and Death triptych (also known as the Engadin Triptych) are an allegorical exemplification of a symbolist concept typical of “fin de siècle” tastes. The ambitious trilogy is based on a recovery of the Panorama dell’Engadina (Engadin Panorama), destined for the 1900 Universal Exposition in Paris, but never completed because of its high costs. The titles (Life, Death and Nature) were not chosen by Segantini, but may have been suggested by a deliberate or unconscious parallel with Paul Gauguin’s painting, Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? (1897). In Life Segantini wanted to reflect a certain dynamism of the figures and the “life of all things that have their roots in the heart of the earth” is synthesized in the figure of the mother and child enthroned on the pine tree’s roots, and the poses of the animals and individuals in the vast, twilight landscape at the beginning of spring. The splendor of the rosy sun illuminates the mountain peaks behind Pian Lutero. The rich, almost tactile brushstrokes describe the general essence of nature beyond any descriptive precision.

This large painting, that was commissioned by a certain Mr. Rosenthal German painter and collector in 1897 summarizes a pantheistic concept of life in which nature is the dominant protagonist within which transient human endeavor acts. Here it is portrayed by the woman who tries to tame the horses. The panoramic landscape, that could be a spectacular and sparkling Alpine memory is the area of Pian Lutero behind the village of Soglio where Segantini usually spent the winter. The almost abstract white clouds give the view a sense of the infinite and unreal depth. Segantini spoke of this painting in terms of “naturalistic symbolism.” The ageless woman with the horses and the old man planting in the left corner of the background (reminiscent of The Sower by Millet) are not allegorical figures. They are participating in the general reawakening of nature expressed by the harmony of colors and the crystalline light of midday.

In the famous Life, Nature and Death triptych (or Engadin Triptych), Life is evoked by a nativity, Death, by a peasant funeral set in a winter landscape, while Nature, (the central part of the triptych) is portrayed by the slow, melancholy end of a day in the pastures at twilight. The iconography of this painting seems to be a combination of two of the artist’s other themes: The Two Mothers and Ritorno all’Ovile (Return to the Fold) as a symbol of resignation and passiveness – on the part of both men and animals – vis à vis life. The landscape is that of Piz Morteratsch, with the village Silvaplana and the lake in the valley below. It was here, in the Ober Engadin, at 4880 meters above sea level, that Segantini met his death as he was working on this canvas. The painting is unfinished, but this does not lessen its obsessive power.

Of the three canvases of the great triptych Life, Nature and Death this is the only one that was not painted in an evening light. It is noon, on the snowy Maloja and the funeral procession is awaiting the body of the girl, wrapped in a white shroud and even the landscape, desolate and wintery conveys the tragedy of death. The black and turquoise of the women’s clothes stand out against the intense, blinding white of the snow, while the crystalline morning light spreads evenly over the entire scene creating a feeling of tranquility and calm. The only truly dramatic note could be the oddly shaped cloud that takes up half the sky and looms over the mountain peak. It suggests nature’s oppression on human destiny, introducing a note of terror in the observer. The foreground with the horse and sleigh was never completed.