Eugenio Zampighi (1859-1944) was an Italian Realist painter noted for his romantic portrayals of Italian peasant life. Think of him as the Norman Rockwell of 19th Century Italy.Zampighi was born in Modena, where he showed a prodigious talent for the fine arts. He went to a local art school at the age of 13 and then studied at Rome. After completing his education, he settled in Florence and prospered through private commissions.
This painting is called A Captive Audience. Like many other Zampighi canvases, it shows grandparents and young children at play. It demonstrates a unique quality of this artist. Most genre painters show the beauty of peasant life by exaggerating its aesthetics unrealistically. For example, Bouguereau's peasant girls, though shoeless, had clean feet and though poor, were well-fed. Other genre painters likewise imported lovely, healthy studio models into rural backdrops and costumes. Why? Well, impoverished peasants without access to good food, health care, and shelter tend to not look very pretty.
But Zampighi did not shy away from the effects of age and poverty. In fact, most of his subjects are elderly. Yet we all remember our grandmothers as beautiful, and these wrinkled old crones can not help but charm us. Norman Rockwell, in a similar fashion, took ordinary people and made them beautiful works of art. Zampighi takes a step further and celebrates the beauty of outright ugly people.
How does he accomplish this feat? Look at the faces in his paintings. The people portrayed are filled with devoted love to each other, in contrast to ennui of other peasant genre scenes. These are the expressions of love that many of us remember from our own grandparents.
The Center of Attention.
The Hunter's Tale.
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