Other People’s Homes

Ah the scent of the middle class and the provinces and Tuscany and the 1800s emanating from Silvestro Lega’s paintings – little girls playing grown-up or helping heaps of wool become soft balls of yarn! Lega – a free-spirited bohemian who lived in unpretentious boarding houses or furnished rooms without the protection and comforts once offered by great patrons and powerful courts, a painter still faithful to line, composition, and clarity despite his allegiance to the Italian Macchiaioli – was passionately in love with other people’s homes, families that didn’t belong to him, and the douceurs of the bourgeoisie. Giovanni Mariotti’s text on Silvestro Lega, the artist and the man, conjures up the seductive aura of an “Imaginary Life”.