- Giuseppe Abbati
Giuseppe Abbati (
January 13 ,1836 –February 21 ,1868 ) was an Italian artist who belonged to the group known as theMacchiaioli .Abbati was born in
Naples and received early training in painting from his brother Vincenzo. He participated inGaribaldi 's 1860 campaign, suffering the loss of his right eye at the Battle ofCapua . Afterwards he moved toFlorence where, at the Caffè Michelangiolo, he metGiovanni Fattori ,Silvestro Lega , and the rest of the artists who would soon be dubbed the Macchiaioli.While his early paintings were interiors, he quickly became attracted to the practice of painting landscapes "en
plein air ". His activity as a painter was interrupted during 1866 when he enlisted again in the army for the Third Independence War, during which he was captured by theAustria ns and held inCroatia .Returning to civilian life at the end of the year, he moved to Castelnuovo della Misericordia and spent the final year of his life painting in the countryside. Abbati died at the age of thirty-two in Florence after his own dog bit him, infecting him with
rabies .His paintings are characterized by a bold treatment of light effects. He often painted a luminous landscape scene as seen through the doorway of a darkened interior, as in the "View from the Wine Cellar of Diego Martelli" (1866). Some of his late landscapes are in the greatly elongated horizontal format often favored by the Macchiaioli.
References
*Broude, Norma (1987). "The Macchiaioli: Italian Painters of the Nineteenth Century". New Haven and London: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-03547-0
*Steingräber, E., & Matteucci, G. (1984). "The Macchiaioli: Tuscan Painters of the Sunlight : March 14-April 20, 1984". New York: Stair Sainty Matthiesen in association with Matthiesen, London. OCLC|70337478
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