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The Harvesting of Corn - Achille Glisenti (1881)

The painting entered the civic collections in 1908 by donation from Giovanni Magnocavallo, the author's nephew, and is one of the best-known and most appreciated works of Achille Glisenti, as well as a unique piece in his production. It was first presented at the National Exhibition in Milan in 1881 and subsequently sent in 1882 to the Royal Academy in London, before appearing, a year later, at the Glaspalast in Munich. Often engaged in illustrating folk themes, in the form of witty tales and country festivities, the Brescia artist here engages in a splendid piece of verismo, reinterpreting the classical theme of the canefora from a perspective of clear social realism. The protagonist wears the traditional costumes of peasant women from the Brescia valleys and carries on her head a basket full of corn. The original title, Ave Maria (registered in 1881 and later replaced by the more prosaic The Harvesting of Corn), suggests that what is depicted is a silent moment of prayer at the end of a hard day of work, when at dusk the farmers prepare to leave the fields. In the same year that Giovanni Verga’s I Malavoglia was published in Milan, Glisenti completed a painting in which the language of academic painting serves not to denounce social issues but rather to rigorously and calmly represent a humble yet dignified condition, as it is ennobled by labor. Therefore, this work perfectly aligns with the Brescia tradition, from which it also takes the expressive use of cold light that shapes the volumes and the attention to the objective description of details, from the woman's tattered dress to the mud-covered feet and tortured by the toil of the man kneeling behind her, dressed in the colors of the earth itself. [source comune.brescia.it]

Associated LP of 1985