| Abstrakt: |
Competing foreign powers had divided the Italic peninsula into regions, so that it resembled the chessboard of Europe. With Napoleon's occupation, an Italian consciousness began to arise. As Neoclassicism and Romanticism ceded to Realism, artists participated in liberal politics and military struggles, many fighting under Garibaldi. Patriotic sentiments appeared in encoded genre scenes – for example, Hayez's two La meditazione paintings, the second subtitled L'Italia nel 1848 – or contemporary themes, like those by the Macchiaioli and the Induno brothers. Risorgimento content, including battles, multiplied, and they were joined by photography. Shifts in taste and patronage, from the Church and the ruling classes to liberal aristocrats, industrial entrepreneurs and middle-class professionals, encouraged new venues for the exhibition of art: the Exposition Universelle, civic Promotrici, Ricasoli's competition and the Esposizione Italiana. After unification, the search for political and artistic reform continued against disillusionment, developing technology and industrialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
