Guglielmo Ciardi (1842 - 1917) Ploughing (Work in the Fields), c. 1872 Oil on canvas 44 x 95 cm Signature: lower left, 'Ciardi' Distinctive elements: on the verso of the frame, 'CIARDI in felt-tip pen Provenance: private collection, Biella Bibliography: Maria and Francesco Pospisil, "Guglielmo Ciardi", Florence, 1946, table 45; Giuseppe L. Marini, ed., "Il valore dei dipinti italiani dell'Ottocento e del primo Novecento", Turin, 1999, p. 205; "Ottocento. Catalogo dell'arte italiana dell'Ottocento", no. 28, Milan, 1999, p. 118; Giuseppe Pavanello, "Venezia: dall'età neoclassica alla 'scuola del vero'", in G. Pavanello, ed., "La pittura nel Veneto. L'Ottocento", I, Milan, 2002, p. 77, fig. 118; Nico Stringa, "Guglielmo Ciardi. Catalogo generale dei dipinti", Crocetta del Montello, 2007, p. 291, no. 368; Stefano Bosi, scheda in Enzo Savoia, Stefano Bosi, a cura di, "I Maestri del Colore. Arte a Venezia nell'800', exhibition catalogue, Milan, 2017, pp. 36-39, 161 Exhibitions: 'I Maestri del Colore. Art in Venice in the 19th century', Milan, Galleria Bottegantica, 2017 Conservation status. Support: 85% (rintelo and rintel) Conservation status. Surface: 80% (colour falls and retouches) Guglielmo Ciardi's training was marked by his alumnus at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice under the guidance of Domenico Bresolin, the renewer of Venetian landscape painting, and by his journey to Florence, Rome and Naples in 1868, which enabled him to get to know the painting of Fattori, Signorini, Costa, Palizzi and Morelli. The works of the artist's early maturity realised between 1868 and 1869 between the Giudecca Canal and the Treviso countryside appear to be inspired by the lesson of the 'real'. As indicated by Nico Stringa, the artist turned his back on the built city to "take the path of a complete and almost unarmed conversation with 'naked' nature, minimising narrative and descriptive (and decorative) elements and the resulting chromatic potential, paving the way for a synthetic approach" (Nico Stringa, "Guglielmo Ciardi: l'istinto del vero", in Nico Stringa, "Guglielmo Ciardi. General Catalogue", cit., pp. 27-45, p. 37-38). In the early 1970s, the lagoon and country landscapes are populated by fishermen and peasants, depicted without rhetoric within the natural environment, which becomes the absolute protagonist. Belonging to the series of country views painted in this period is 'L'aratura' (Ploughing), a canvas with the characteristic elongated format of the Macchiaioli tradition. It is a painting of delicate balance, perfectly bipartitioned by the horizon line and built on the contrast between the warm, earthy tones of the lower part and the cold tones of the upper part. The white and blue describe the variations of light in the sky coruscated by sparse clouds and the snow on the distant mountain tops. The scene takes place at the end of autumn: two men complete the task of ploughing, while two women are ready to sow. These are impersonal figures, portrayed from behind or in profile, their faces unrecognisable. What counts is, in fact, the balanced and serene relationship between nature and human activities. The calm gestures of the figures take on a mythical dimension, in analogy with contemporary French field painting from Millet to Breton. Teresa Sacchi Lodispoto