1891–1895: Ambasciatori della Fame 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."
1895–1898: La Fiumana Pellizza, before painting
The Fourth Estate, decided in August 1895 to create a preliminary study in oil. This version, titled
La Fiumana ("The River of Humanity"), represented a break from the previous drafts of
Ambasciatori della Fame. Compared to them, there are many more people in the crowd and the painting is physically much larger. Pellizza also used a different range of color in
La Fiumana than in earlier versions. This time, he played with "contrasts of yellow and red, with the dominant ones in the earthy, sulfuric figures and the tones of blue to green in the background, where the sky is of a more intense, stronger azure blue and the green of plants is reflected on the ground." The result is a much darker palette, compared to the light tones in
Ambasciatori. The shadow in the front of the earlier versions is no longer present, and the crowd is placed further forward and emphasized with a lower viewpoint. Likewise, the architectural elements have been reduced or removed. The pleading figure at right has been replaced by woman holding a baby in her arms; she stands slightly behind the other two workers and represents the inclusion of women as deserving of workers' rights. Thanks to the various drawings, preparatory studies, and photographs of the models in pose, Pellizza was able to draft the definitive version of
Fiumana in July 1895. The variants multiplied: the countryside underwent changes, while the line of figures in the back was made thinner or set further back, permitting the insertion of more figures. Pellizza's goal was to restore the vitality of a people that were no longer "a natural death, but a living, palpable mass, full of humble hopes or dark menace." Pellizza tried to give
Fiumana a universal scope, exemplified in a poem he wrote on the margin of the canvas:
1898–1901: Il Quarto Stato Dissatisfied with the technical artistic effect of
Fiumana but also in light of the brutal
Bava Beccaris massacre in Milan, Pellizza decided in 1898 to make the work for a third time on "the greatest manifesto that the Italian proletariat could boast between the 19th and 20th century." His objectives were to render the crowd more tumultuous and impetuous, forming "a wedge towards the observer", and to perfect the chromatic values. For these reasons, he made a smaller work,
Il Cammino dei Lavoratori ("The Path of the Workers"), in 1898. In this preparatory drawing, he gave greater relief to the gestures of the workers, enriching their realism. For example, the woman worker in the front now gestures with her left hand, whereas in
Fiumana she held her baby in both arms. The figures in the background express uncertainty or seem to be talking amongst themselves. The first row of workers are delineated with greater plasticity, "while embedding, like a river, the final part of the array, under a sky articulated with serene spaces and turbulent clouds." This dynamism was also translated in work's palette, which returned to a cold range of colors that included rosy ochres, arranged with small brushstrokes of little lines and points. This is the
post-Impressionist technique of
divisionism, which tried to take a more scientific approach to color and became a national Italian art style. The technical picture is explained by Pellizza in a letter of May 18, 1898, sent to his friend Mucchi: With
Il Camino dei Lavoratori, Pellizza's social aim for the picture changed, as he adopted Italian socialist
proletarian culture. The depiction was no longer of a "human river," but of "men of labor" who struggled for universal rights as part of the class struggle. Also, unlike in previous versions, the figures of
Il Cammino dei Lavoratori are individuated and identifiable. The workers' step toward the observer is not violent; it is slow, with a calmness that gives a sense of invincibility. This sense of inevitability matches Pellizza's belief in the gradual transformation of Italy into a socialist society. The drafting of
Il Cammino dei Lavoratori took three years. Pellizza was able to finish painting in 1901, and when the work was complete he decided to give it a new title—
Il Quarto Stato—to refer to the
Fourth Estate, the working class. This decision is attributed to Pellizza's discussion with a friend, Arzano, about their reading of
Storia della rivoluzione francese by
Jean Jaurès, which stated the third estate comprised both the bourgeois and the proletariat. ==Description and style==