The Pergola

In the early 1860s, Telemaco Signorini and Odoardo Borrani settled in the Piagentina area east of Florence, to join Silvestro Lega who was also working there. Lega developed an overriding interest in effects of light, an interest he expressed in the plein-air nature studies he painted around Piagentina after 1861. He also painted simple genre idylls which used loving detail to record the everyday lives of ordinary rural folk. At times Lega’s approach could resemble the Biedermeier period in southern German art. One of his finest paintings is The Pergola, which preserves the flavour of his Purist schooling in its clarity and its compositional balance.