The Fourth Estate and its "construction site" (1891-1901)
A century has passed since 1901, the date that Giuseppe Pellizza placed in Il Quarto Stato to fix the conclusion of the large canvas begun in 1898, but which also marked the end of a decade of passionate studies and continuous reworkings on a theme inspired by problems. of society. The painter's reflections on contemporary history allowed him to move from depicting episodes of struggle for the claim of elementary rights of the people and workers to the affirmation of a slow but inexorable progress of the entire working class, which has risen to be the protagonist of the new century. The painting - as well as those that preceded it, Ambassadors of hunger and Fiumana and The journey of the workers which is the real sketch of the definitive painting - had been conceived and completed by Pellizza a Volpedo, working in the atelier for the execution of the large preparatory cartoons of single figures and groups, for which the fellow villagers posed as models, but then painted it outdoors, bringing the large canvas to Piazzetta Malaspina, where his pointillist painting could be substantiated by the full and warm summer light. Pellizza sent Il Quarto Stato in 1902 to the Quadriennale of Turin, and the capital of his Piedmont seemed to him a harbinger of good wishes. Like any painter, although fond of his work, he did not want to bring it back to his studio and hoped that that large canvas - for which he could not hope for a private buyer - would be taken into consideration for official purchases, of the royal house or of the ministry, in the certainty that, in terms of form and content, it deserved an official and public seat: it would have been a victory for art and for the people. Instead the canvas, whose subject generated a certain embarrassment among right-thinking critics and potential buyers, remained unsold and not awarded and returned to Volpedo's studio, accompanied only by the esteem of some friends, such as Giovanni Cena, who prophesied a long duration for the painting. in time. The strength of the work, however, was consolidated at a popular level and in this context the purchase by the Municipality of Milan also matured in 1920, by public subscription promoted by councilors of the socialist area, with the destination to the Gallery of modern art. of the Sforza Castle. The artistic qualities of the work returned to the fore, also enriching the understanding and interpretation of the subject, starting from 1970 with the Italian Divisionism Exhibition, which marked the beginning of an increasingly prestigious exhibition process both in Italy (from Milan to Alessandria, Turin, Rome) and abroad (from London to Washington, Paris).
[Text taken from "Cent'anni di Quarto Stato", illustrative brochure of the centenary events (Volpedo, 2 - 30 September 2001)]
The Fourth Estate (Italian: Il quarto stato) is an oil painting by Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo, originally titled The Path of Workers and made between 1899 and 1901. It depicts a moment during a labor strike when workers' representatives calmly and confidently stride out of a crowd to negotiate for the workers' rights. Its name refers to the working class as standing alongside the three traditional estates that divided power between the nobility, clergy, and commoners.
Pellizza made three separate large-scale preliminary versions of the work to experiment with his divisionist representations of color. After his death, The Fourth Estate became a popular Italian socialist image and was reproduced extensively despite its initial shunning by formal art circles. Over time, its acclaim grew until it became recognized as one of the most important Italian paintings of the turn of the 20th century. The painting is now at the Museo del Novecento in Milan.
Following the Italian Risorgimento, the peasant and bourgeois classes of the new country had an uncertain relationship. Some bourgeois intellectuals bemoaned the lowering of Italian culture, while artists—particularly the divisionists—brought social themes into their artwork. Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo tried to unite the techniques of divisionism with the influence of the farmers' mutual aid society he had joined in his hometown of Volpedo and the socialist writings of the Second International.
Pellizza began to work on a study for Ambasciatori della Fame (Ambassadors of Hunger) in 1891, after participating in a workers' protest in Turin. The scene made such an impression on him that he noted it in his diary:
The first sketch was completed in April 1891. The subject was a workers' revolt in Piazza Malaspina in Volpedo, with three subjects placed at the front of the protest. The scene is viewed from above, and the figures are distributed on orthogonal lines. This core composition remained in successive versions of the work, each of which presents the three figures in front of a mass of people in the background and a dark backdrop. The shadow stretching out to the ambassador's feet is likely the palazzo on Piazza Malaspina, where the workers are going to make their demands.
Pellizza made numerous other intermediary works between the first drawing of Ambasciatori della Fame and Fiumana. He also made Piazza Malaspina a Volpedo in 1891, which represents the topography of Volpedo as a preparatory background for the subsequent versions. He made two other versions of Ambasciatori della Fame, one dated 1892 and the other 1895. The 1892 sketch is similar to the first. However, Pellizza added a group of women to the 1892 drawing, who are juxtaposed with the male workers.
The last draft before La Fiumana is the 1895 version of Ambasciatori, created after three quiet years on brown paper as a charcoal and gesso drawing. Pelliza wrote of it:
In the passage above, the artist underlined his wish to follow a general theory: not only to represent the citizens of Volpedo, but also an entire part of society that has "suffered greatly" and that intends to claim its rights through a struggle "serene, calm, and reasoned."
This is a part of the Wikipedia article used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA). The full text of the article is here →
