Giovanni Segantini by ACC Art Books

Acknowledgements

This publication was financed and supported through the generous contributions of the following institutions and foundations. We would like to offer our warm thanks for their trust and dedication:

Ars Rhenia Foundation

Biblioteca Engiadinaisa

Boner Foundation for art and culture

Comitato Segantini

Ernst Göhner Foundation

Kulturförderung Kanton Graubünden

Willi Muntwyler Foundation

Stavros S. Niarchos Foundation

Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council

Descriptions of Works

54 The Choir of the Church of Sant’ A ntonio, 1879

56 The Bell Ringer, 1879/80

58 Self-Portrait Age Twenty, 1879/80

6 0 Naviglio under Snow, 1879/80

62 Portrait of Leopoldina Grubicy, ca. 1880

64 L andscape with a Woman on a Tree, ca. 1881

66 L andscape with Sheep, ca. 1881

68 K issing the Cross, 1881/82

70 Painters of Today, 1882/83

72 Portrait of a Lady, 1883/84

74 Bagpipers of Brianza (Zampognari in Brianza), 1883–1885

76 The Pumpkin Harvest, 1883/84

78 The Blessing of the Sheep, ca. 1884

80 The Last Effort of the Day, 1884

84 Portrait of Signora Torelli, 1885/86

86 E arly Mass, 1885/86

88 Mushrooms, 1886

90 Still Life with White Goose, 1886

92 The Rod, 1886

96 The Sheep Shearing, 1886–1888

98 Ave Maria Crossing the Lake, 1886

104 The Water Carrier, 1886/87

106 Portrait of Vittore Grubicy, 1887

108 Light Contrast, 1887

110 At the Well, 1887

112 Return to the Fold, 1888

114 The Snowmelt in Savognin, 1888

116 Girl Knitting, 1888

118 C ows at the Water Trough, 1888

120 My Models, 1888

124 The Hay Harvest, 1888/89 / 1898

130 The Two Mothers, 1889

134 Mountain Pasture in May, 1890

136 Return from the Woods, 1890

140 Plowing, 1890

142 Midday in the Alps, 1891

144 Midday in the Alps, 1892

146 The Two Mothers, 1891

148 Resting in the Shade, 1892

150 Dead Fawn, 1892

152 On the Balcony, 1892

154 Brown Cow at the Trough, 1892

156 The Sad Hour, 1892

158 Woman at the Well, 1893/94

160 A lpine Meadows, 1893–1895

162 The Punishment of Lust, 1891

164 The Bad Mothers, 1894

166 The Angel of Life, 1894

168 Return to the Homeland, 1895

170 Self-Portrait, 1895

174 L ove at the Fountain of Life, 1896

176 Meadows in Spring, 1896

178 The Comfort of Faith (Religious C omfort), 1895/96

180 Portrait of Carlo Rotta, 1897

182 Vanity (The Source of Evil), 1897

184 Springtime in the Alps, 1897

188 A lpine Landscape, 1898/99

190 Life Nature Death, 1896–1899

Appendix

199 Biography Giovanni Segantini

203 Bibliography (Selection)

206 Image Credits

Many of Segantini’s statements emphasize that he wanted to internalize nature in its entirety and with all of his senses in the sense of Symbolist synaesthesia. Segantini pointed out the following to a young painter, who asked for advice: “As soon as you are outside in nature, you begin to reflect the earth beneath your feet, the little springs, the green, blossoming grass, the stones, then the trees in relation to the things that surround them; then the animals, and again in relation to things that surround them, then people in relation to things in nature and to animals. And thus, one gradually climbs upwards from the beautiful rendition of individual things in the interplay of light and color to beautiful forms of expression, beautiful lines, which depict an idea, to beautiful sentience.” 41

Segantini wrote his arguably most beautiful passage on his project of the monumental Engadine panorama in a letter to art critic Vittorio Pica, addressing the deep connection with nature of the painter. “Only he who has lived up here for months on end like me, within the luminous pastures of the Alpine world, in the azure blue days of spring, where I have listened to the voices rising up from the valleys, and the faint eddies of melody carried on the wind from afar, filling us with holy silence before the immeasurable space of this world of blue encircled in the chains of rocky mountains and snowy glaciers on the skyline only he may become aware of the high artistic significance of these chromatic harmonies.” 42

The Dream of a Castle

Although Segantini mentions only four families that live in Maloja, even in the late 19th century, nascent Alpine tourism caused a sensation. From 1882 to 1884, the Belgian Count Camille de Renesse built the Hôtel-Kursaal de la Maloja for high society, also called the Maloja Palace. The colossal, magnificent five-storey building with 300 rooms, dining halls, and ballrooms has a strange presence with its Neo-Renaissance façade in the middle of the imposing mountainscape by the shore of Lake Sils.43 In the Palace’s heyday, Segantini mixed with the clientele of what was apparently the most luxurious hotel in Europe of its time. Camille de Renesse, who was forced to atone for his delusions of grandeur in November 1884 when he declared bankruptcy, began building the Belvedere Tower and castle, which was supposed to become the domicile of the count’s family alongside the Grand Hotel. Interruptions delayed the building’s construction, it was only completed between 1896 and 1903.44 A painting by Segantini’s pupil Giovanni Giacometti (Ill. 5) illustrated the scene in precise topographic detail: from Silser Lake, a canal and a path lined with saplings lead straight to the gigantic hotel-palace, which towers far above the small houses of Capolago and those of the village of Maloja behind it; in the forested middle-ground, the Belvedere Castle with its prominent tower is enthroned on a hill at the picture’s center. The impressive silhouette of sharply rising mountains forms the backdrop.

Giovanni Segantini, who in terms of domestic appearances a lways strove to live up to his renown as a prominent artist of the fin de siècle and a celebrated Symbolist, intended to restore and expand the Belvedere Tower and castle, and take up residence there with its family. Like the failed panorama project for Paris, this exorbitant plan was also not realized. Segantini dreamed of living in the curious castle, which, in its exceptional setting, befitted his rank as a master artist. Because it is located on a headland that drops into the valley towards the West with breath-taking steepness, the writer Annemarie Schwarzenbach once referred to it as the “Bregaglian plummet”. Meanwhile

the spectacular view to the east faces the landscape of Maloja and Silser Lake. Segantini would have been enthroned here high above two different, equally fascinating landscapes, precisely on the grade bordering between the Cisalpine and Transalpine regions (Ill. 8). All that remains of Segantini’s idea of appropriating Belvedere Tower as a “stony manifestation of himself”, and developing it into a gesamtkunstwerk with nature, architecture, and art in unity, is a letter to Carlo Walther45 and two drawings. The two pages show the Tower and Belvedere Castle from the front and rear perspective (Ill. 6, 7). “I would like to take over the castle for ten years, in order to live to it. By and by, it will become a worthy dwelling, through a repair here and a renovation there, and doing everything possible to benefit its appearance and preservation. […] My idea would be to gradually build a replica of a medieval settlement close to the castle, taking care that each building is an attraction in its own right, but also as a whole.” 46 Segantini’s desire for a feudal residency stands in stark contrast to his eschewal of a proper studio, which he renounced due to his preference for setting out into open landscape to work.

Ill. 5

Giovanni Giacometti

View of Maloja and Hotel Palace, 1899

Oil on canvas, 119 × 150 cm

Hotel Schweizerhaus, Maloja

Self-Portrait Age Twenty 1879/80

Giovanni Segantini created this first known self-portrait shortly before graduating from the academy in Milan, around the same time that his painting The Choir of the Church of Sant’ Antonio was displayed at the Brera exhibition when he received his first critical acclaim (cf. p. 54). The painting style of the small-format self-portrait follows in the tradition of Realism and builds on Romantic ideas of artist portraits. The contrast between the warm, bright tonality of the subject’s complexion, his bourgeois clothing, and the shadowy background is particularly compelling. Arranging himself in front of a mirror in his Sunday best, the artist affects a dignified pose in this three-quarter view portrait. He presents himself as a self-confident young painter at the beginning of a promising career. Yet, there is a sense w ith his gaze fixed in the distance of quiet apprehension at a possibly uncertain future.

In a portrait dating some ten years later, Segantini portrays himself again in a similar three-quarter profile drawing (Ill. 1). However, this time he dispenses with “the superficial emphasis on attire” and achieves “a significantly greater intensity” by “inclining his head toward the mirror, and fixing his gaze directly on himself and thus on the viewer, with what is an ostensibly critical, interrogative demeanor”.1

Thereafter, Segantini abandons this more conventional form of self-portrait that strings along the viewer. His subsequent portraits demonstrate a stricter, symmetrical frontality, which enhances their symbolic subject matter to the same effect (cf. p. 170).

Oil on canvas, 35 × 26 cm

Signed bottom right: G Segantini

Comune di Arco

Ill. 1

Self-Portrait, 1890

Charcoal on paper, 26.8 × 23.3 cm

Civico Gabinetto dei Disegni, Castello Sforzesco, Milan

Oil on canvas, 117 × 82 cm

Signed and dated bottom left: G Segantini 1884

Szépmüvészeti Múzeum, Budapest

The Last Effort of the Day 1884 L’ ultima fatica del giorno

1 Cf. R obert L. Herbert “City versus Country The Rural Image in French Painting from Millet to Gauguin”, in: Artforum, 8th February, 1970, pp. 4 4–65; André Ferminger, Jean-François Millet – Die Entdeckung des 19. Jahrhunderts, Stuttgart, 1979; James Thompason, The peasant in French 19th century art, Trinity College, Dublin, 1980; Jean François Millet, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1984.

2 Cf. Quinsac 1982, nos. 387–393; Stutzer 2004b, p. 20.

3 I n France, faggot-gathering would eventually become illegal. See John Berger, “Millet and the Peasant”, in About Looking, New York, 1980 (1991), pp. 76–85.

4 S ervaes 1902 (1920), p. 61.

5 Ibid.

6 T. [Timothy] J. Clark. The Absolute Bourgeois. Artists and Politics in France, 1848–1851, Berkeley, 1973, p. 72.

7 I bid., p. 73.

8 I bid., p. 98.

At the time of this work’s origin Segantini was significantly influenced by French painter Jean-François Millet, whose works of Realism he had first encountered as reproductions. The biographies of the two artists show surprising parallels. Millet had moved out of Paris to the countryside with his partner and their illegitimate children: while residing in the forests of Fontainebleau, he became one of the leading founders of the Barbizon School. As a proponent of plein air, he had also become known as the ‘peasant painter’ per se.1 Millet was the first artist who did not lampoon the peasantry as yokels, as had been common during the Golden Age of Dutch painting. Neither did he idealize them. Instead, he illustrated the drudgery of agricultural work, the hardship of the peasantry, and the destitution and often precarious, existential condition of living on the land.

The motif of gathering kindling and firewood, involving the difficult work of hauling a cumbersome burden along a steep incline, was one of Segantini’s frequent subjects during his residence in Brianza. In one instance, he shows a shepherdess carrying home faggots in the evening; at other times, he portrays an old man struggling with his hefty load.2 The subject always depicts the bygone traditional practice of collecting firewood: the poorest of the poor once depended on gath-

ering wood left over by landowners and forest holders to meet their basic needs making fire, heating, and cooking.3

The image The Last Effort of the Day depicts an old man at dusk followed by two sheep on his way home. Carrying an awkward bundle on his back, he descends the steep grooves cut into the mountainside. “Drudgingly, the old quarry-worker moves down the stony incline with sparing steps, involuntarily hurried along by his oppressive burden. It is apparent how cumbersome it is for him to walk, and one feels with a sense of clarity: this is a life of poverty. Lumbering under the excessive weight, he moves inexorably downhill, barely able to hold himself upright without toppling over.”4 The man and the sheep stand out above the diagonal line of the horizon in dark silhouette, sharply backlit against the yellow pallor of the sky that fades into gradations of blue-green and dull, grey-blue colors. “And the declivitous pasture stretches from grey-green to black. It is an entire symphony, made entirely of broken grey.”5 Enveloped in a sallow light, the pastoral landscape of man and beast forms a single unity, the color scheme heavy and earthbound in yellow, ochre, brown, and grey tones.

Despite its relatedness in terms of subject, Segantini’s interpretation of this aspect of simple peasant life differs considerably from that of Jean-François Millet. With the Frenchman, “labor is given the form, and the weight, of ritual. Work, for Millet, is not usually a process, which changes or shapes the surrounding world, not a matter of making or assertion. It is a series of actions endlessly repeated.” 6 This is evident in, for example, Millet’s sinister paintings The Sower (Ill. 1) and Women Carrying Faggots (Ill. 2). Millet invests the field workers with an aura in their pathos-ridden poses as they complete their monotonous, anonymous tasks: “He had to suggest that work was tragic, in the old sense of that word, as well as ordinary.” 7 “The strength of his art, in any case, came in the tension of the tragic and the ordinary.” 8 Bavarian reformer and writer Joseph von Hazzi wrote about these central characters of the underclass to whom Jean-François Millet gave shape and voice in his paintings: “The country folk or peasantry are hardly recognized as human beings likened to livestock, their lot is serfdom t heir landlord and masters drive them with the whips of scorn and ridicule. There are a

Ill. 1

Jean-François Millet

The Sower, 1850 Oil on canvas, 101.6 × 82.6 cm

of Fine Arts, Boston

Museum

Brianza, Segantini had employed a traditional tonal palette to modulate forms and create volume with light and shadow. In Savognin, the “colors of the objects were more dominant.” 11 He explicitly illuminated what were previously dark areas. He especially applied the new painting technique to fields of light. In contrast to French Pointillism, where pure colors are applied in grid-like dots, Segantini placed commalike brushstrokes on the canvas as well as in stripes of fine, long, narrow brushstrokes. Because he not only used pure, unmixed hues but also juxtaposed complementary color values, adding them into and adjoining the spaces in between the long, slender ribbons of brushstrokes, he developed his own style called Divisionism. Ave Maria Crossing the Lake primarily demonstrates this Divisionist painting technique in the areas of sky and water, while the occupants of the skiff are still kept in a more traditional, restrained, tonal color scheme. The sky and water take up the majority of the image surface. Mostly consisting of vibrant yellow, light blue, and brilliant white colors, the fine brushstrokes configure the sky in the form of a large radial semicircle, which then ripples out in circular rays. These sunbeams are refracted in the water across the horizon, where, in the middle of the painting, the sun has just risen.

times, after which they reverberate for some time. In this way, the invocation induces the shepherd to pause his rowing for a moment of silent contemplation with his wife. The space of this meditation is nature: inner peace is found on the still expanse of the lake.

1 Quinsac 1990a, p. 1 14.

2 Cf. Karin Wimmer, Albrecht Dürers ‘Betende Hände’ und ihre trivialisierte Rezeption. Untersuchungen zu Darstellungen von Dürers eigener Hand und die Popularität des Motivs im 20. Jahrhundert, Innsbruck, 1999.

3 Cf. Mona Lisa im 20. Jahrhundert, WilhelmLehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, 1978.

4 Cf. Franz Zelger, Die Toteninsel. Selbsttheorisierung und Abgesang der abendländischen Kultur, Frankfurt a.M., 1991.

5 Quinsac 1982, nos. 494–497.

6 S ervaes 1902 (1920), p. 85.

7 For a long time, the painting was only known second-hand from the drawing and photograph that Primom Levi published in 1899, cf. Primo Levi, “Il Primo e il Secondo Segantini”, in: Rivista d’Italia, III, Rome, November 1899. It was also held that the first version of Ave Maria Crossing the Lake had been lost. However, although it was significantly reworked and subsequently lost some of its characteristic authenticity, the version of Ave Maria Crossing the Lake that Segantini’s son Gottardo restored in 1903 is the first, original version.

8 S ervaes 1902 (1920), p. 85.

9 Quinsac 1990a, p. 1 14.

10 For more on the considerable differences between the first and second versions, see Stutzer 2004c.

11 Frehner 1999, p. 2 0.

12 I bid., p. 24.

13 Traeger 2004, pp. 16–17: “The sun does not rise, but is in the process of disappearing under the horizon. Therefore, it is not a morning, but evening prayer.”

14 Traeger 2004, p. 17; H. Dünninger, A. Stöger, P. Wiertz, “Ave Maria”, in: Marienlexikon, Vol. I, St. Ottilien, 1988, pp. 309–313.

15 H. Schauerte (T. Gebhard), “Angelus-Läuten” in: Marienlexikon, vol. I, St. Ottilien, 1988, p. 1 46f.

16 Wäspe 1999, p. 1 12.

17 I bid., p. 112.

18 Traeger 2004, pp. 19–20.

19 I bid., p. 31. See also Jörg Traeger, Kopfüber. Kunst am Ende des 20. Jahrhunders, Munich, 2004.

20 I bid., p. 32.

21 Frehner 2004, p. 100.

22 Hans Zbinden, “Segantini’s Gegenwärtigkeit”, in: Giovanni Segantini 1858–1899, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, 1956.

Segantini achieved his artistic goal with the Divisionist technique: the intensification and unification, and the orchestrated impact of light. Matthias Frehner noted that the new treatment of light had the effect of reducing the painting’s three-dimensional perspective and the image consequently appears quite shallow. In this way, Segantini’s Divisionism takes him “in the same direction as the avant-garde of the time: he, too, sees the picture as a surface, just as Maurice Denis had demanded in his famous definition of 1890. It is just that one is less aware of it in Segantini’s case, since the pictures are more often than not dominated by a narrative theme: yet one only has to imagine the lake without the boat a nd the surface of the picture becomes a series of surfaces.” 12

The image presents a perspective of the Lake of Pusiano. On the opposite bank, the Church of San Giuseppe of Garbagnate Rota is discernible. The main subject of the image is a boat with two overarching wooden braces, in which a shepherd and his young wife and child sit amongst a dense throng of sheep. Backlit by the rising sun, which casts a clear light that spans across the sky, the reflection of the dinghy is visible in the water. It is unambiguously dawn, and not, as is claimed in certain literature, dusk.13 The immediate association with the trinity of mother, child, and man is the holy family, above all because the couple is absorbed in prayer. Like a vault, the yellow light from the aureole of the sun illuminates them. Although the image appears to be a genre painting at first glance, it proves to be a religious subject, as indicated by its title. The people in the little boat recite the Ave Maria, the traditional medieval prayer of Hail Mary, which became synonymous with the Catholic faith during the age of confession: “Hail Mary, full of grace, our lord is with thee” (Luke 1,28).14 Since the 14th century, the Angelus bells have called their congregations to prayer for the recitation of the Ave Maria in the morning, at noon, and at night (for Vespers).15 The Angelus bells, also known as the angels’ or Ave bells, commemorate the Incarnation by chiming three

The image is rapt with a stillness, where the “the narrative element […] is concentrated into a moment, extended into eternity and thus ultimately timeless.” 16 The prayer of the pastoral devotees plays out under the open sky, in nature, not in the institutional seat of the Church: “Segantini’s intended in fact revolutionary statement [is embodied in] an image of the unspoiled link between lowly individuals and their religio, set above the established institution of the Church […].” 17 Jörg Traeger describes the instant of silent worship poignantly: the skiff has “almost come to rest” because the man has let up his rowing. Only the “soft play of ripples attests to a suspension of motion.“ Lost in prayer, “the pilot of the boat” grasps the hilts of the submerged oars with a surety of hand, bearing the “responsibility to return the flock including mother and child safely to the fold on the banks.” The image is arresting in its integration of “the providential union of man and wife”, “the contemplation and intimate joy of motherhood”, and “the young certainty of a new day.” The complementary motifs are bound together “in an overarching reflection of family harmony”, which also “encompasses the burden of care for the sheep.” The unity of man and nature, the calm atmosphere, the pastoral scene, and the motif of praying on the lake substantiate this idyll. “The enveloping warmth of the animals, the solitude in the midst of the lake, the break in a lonesome passage, the windless silkiness of the wide expanse of water, the quiet introversion of worship and reassuring incantation of the Marian prayer, the elegiac resonance of the distant tolling bells that even the viewer believes he can hear, these all melt into a unified, visual-psychological whole within this genre painting of pastoral tranquility, while also capturing the temporal dimension of transience.” 18

The mirroring of the boat, its occupants, and the arched beams on the rippling water surface serve to round off the composition of the semicircular beams into an enclosed oval. The reflection on the water is also a metaphor: it alludes to the “quiet consensus between man and nature” and symbolizes the “expression of a peaceful communion, yes, even exchange between heaven and earth in the visual reversal of up and down; the transcendental role of prayer; and, within the metaphorical logic of Segantini’s lyrical iconography, the healing function of the Church parabolized in nature.” 19 “The imagery of the reflection plays a significant role in the silent melancholy emanating from the idyll […]. In this sense, the ephemeral image within the image echoes the resonating and fading Angelus bells.” 20

The dinghy with its arching braces and the analogous reflection on the water create a large oval form that acts like a halo, elevating “the figures in the reality of everyday experience onto an allegorical plane.” 21 Repeated reference is made to the “strong, geometric structure of the painting”: the “verticality and horizontality, the almost abstract orchestration” evoke “an impression of serenity, of balance, of an elated mood of peace, calm, and infinitude.” 22 Segantini indeed organizes the composition along a clear structure of horizon-

Oil on canvas, 83 × 139.5 cm

Signed and dated inscription on the plank of the cart: G. SEGANTINI SAVOGNIN MDCCCLXXXVIII Op. LXXII

Kunstmuseum Basel, Collection of the Gottfried Keller Foundation

Cows at the Water Trough 1888 Vacche aggiogate

1 S ervaes 1902(1920), p. 1 10.

2 Stückelberger 2004, p. 76.

3 C hristoph Becker, “Rudolf Koller – Kuh und Mensch”, in: Rudolf Koller, Kunsthaus Zurich, p. 8.

4 Ibid.

5 L etter from Rudolf Koller to Robert Zünd, 7th November, 1867, citation in: ibid., p. 17, note 15.

6 L etter from Franz Marc to Reinhard Piper, 30th April, 1910, in: Franz Marc, Schriften, C ologne, 1978, p. 98.

Viennese journalist and theater critic Franz Servaes held the painting Cows at the Water Trough to which he referred at the time as ‘Kühe im Joch’ [translated as ‘Cows under Yoke’] to be the most remarkable work within the oeuvre of the artist. This because he saw certain artistic accomplishments to be the most fully developed: “Segantini deployed all of his considerable skill within the wonderful painting ‘Cows under Yoke’. Here, he again draws on the motif of the mountain wellspring, with the girl drinking from the duct and the animals from the trough, immortalizing them in this most masterful design. The village stands far-off in the distance, abutting the mountain. A sweeping chain of mountains covered in deep powder snow glows crisply between the matte tones of the sky and the dark colors of the landscape, which falls off in terraces. The cattle and cart, and the girl leaning over the trough toward the water duct occupy the whole expanse of the foreground. The foreground is lit in brilliant sunlight, which powerfully brings out individual detail. In sharpest relief is the grain of the wood discernible on the four-wheeled wooden cart in the foreground. It is contoured in bluish, cast shadow, especially along the wheels. The two cows are wonderful, broad, well-fed animals. The brown cow is half-concealed by the other brindled animal, which looks back at us, slavering water from its mouth. Only the upper body of the girl in the white bonnet appears from behind the massive trough. In their tantalizing surface qualities, both the tree bark on the trough as well as the pelts of the animals attest to the painterly skill of the artist. Here, as well as in his representation of the turf in the foreground, the artist applies his Divisionist technique, in which the paint is applied in mosaic-like, adjacent lines. The tedium of the technique did not prevent the artist from consistently applying the method throughout the entire painting.” 1

Leading diagonally into the painting from right to left, the main subject is positioned within the otherwise horizontally arranged painting so that the entire composition benefits from a dynamism of space. Behind the genre scene with the peasant woman, for whom Baba Uffer also modeled (see pp. 110, 116, 120, 1 42, 1 44, 1 48, 152), the great expanse of the pastoral landscape unfolds in front of the brilliant white shades of the snowy mountain range in the background. The topographical location of the mountain backdrop is difficult to ascertain, because the scene in the foreground could have “played out anywhere” and because “the village depicted in the midground is not unambiguously identifiable as Savognin.” This is explained in that Segantini placed “a scene in the foreground within a real, indeterminate landscape, while he chose a different site for the background, at an elevation several hundred meters above Savognin on the way to Mount Tussagn.”2

Once again, Giovanni indicates the fundamental significance of water as an essential element for both man and beast (see pp. 1 10, 158). It is noteworthy that the peasant woman has let the cattle go ahead to drink from the trough, while she takes her time to drink from the duct leading into it. Segantini’s pantheistic worldview encompasses not only nature and mankind in a cosmic cycle, but also the turning of the seasons, the finiteness of life and death, and the world of animals. These creatures accompany man from his very origins. They act as beasts of burden, which the farmers and shepherds carefully tend. They belong to the world of real and existential everyday life, and yet also occupy a symbolic domain because of their collective experience with humans. The cows that Segantini prefers to portray on their own, as colossal individuals, are always tied into the diurnal and seasonal course of pastoral work. However, they are also always in their immediate environment, in the landscape. The size of the animals, the texture and structure of their bodies are nuanced in their palpable presence. Simultaneously, they merge together with the other things depicted in a poignant totality.

Another example of contemporaneous imagery of the cow as a symbol for patience and goodness is the work of Zurich artist Rudolf Koller. Although he also painted in the mountains, in Haslital, a valley in the Bernese Oberland, and the hamlet Richisau in the Klöntal valley, his academic realism kept him at a distance from the “raw, everyday life of the inhabitants” 3 of the mountain vales. Koller’s cows possess a “bucolic serenity.” 4 Such an intimate, direct cow gazing at the viewer is unimaginable in Segantini’s work. Thus, it is not surprising Koller lamented that “the hardest thing” for him to paint was always the “environment of the animals.” 5 Segantini’s holistic interpretation and integration of animals in the context of the entirety of creation is situated between Koller’s late Biedermeier conception of them and the radical new interpretation of Franz Marc’s animal creatures. In 1910, the German Expressionist wrote that he was concerned with “a pantheistic mode of feeling-one’s-way-into [Sich-hinein-Fühlen] the trembling and trickling of nature, in the trees, in the animals, in the air.” 6

In contrast to the painting, Segantini dramatizes the hatches of lines with motion, rendering luminous effects. The ‘mirror-image’ of the scene might at first be cause for confusion. While it would require little explanation if this were a print, it is an unusual decision for a drawing of the painting, though apparently not uncommon in Segantini’s work. He frequently drew his paintings in inverted form. It is assumed that several of the drawings might have come about in a process of tracing, where the image of the original was then reversed. Another speculation is that the subject was flipped through a photographic reproduction of the negative.

Ill. 2

Jean-François Millet Les glaneuses (The Gleaners), 1857 Oil on canvas, 84 × 111 cm

Musée d‘Orsay, Paris

Ill. 3

The Hay Harvest, 1892–1898

Black and red chalk, pencil on reddish paper, 19 × 26.5 cm

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Charcoal, gold dust, and traces of crayon on canvas, 59 × 50 cm

Dated bottom right: 1895

Segantini Museum, St. Moritz

Self-Portrait 1895 Autoritratto

1 A lbrecht 2004, p. 1 15.

2 I bid., p. 114.

3 I bid., p. 1 15. Cf. S ervaes 1902 (1920), p. 98.

4 Cf. Donat de Chapeaurouge, “Theomorphe Porträts der Neuzeit”, in: Deutsche Vierteljahresschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 42, 1968, pp. 2 62–302; Philippe Junod, “(Auto)Portrait de l’ a rtiste en Christ / Das (Selbst)Portrait des Künstlers als Christus”, in: L’ autoportrait à l’ âge de la photographie: Peintres et photographes en dialogue avec leur propre image / Das Selbstportrait im Zeitalter der Photographie: Maler und Photographen im Dialog mit sich selbst, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, 1985, pp. 59–79.

5 C hapeaurouge 1968 (cf. n. 4), p. 2 62.

6 A lbrecht 2004, p. 1 22. Cf.: Franz Winzinger, “Albrecht Dürers Münchener Selbstbildnis”, in: Zeitschrift für Kunstwissenschaft, 8, 1954, pp. 43–64; Fedja Anzelewsky, Albrecht Dürer. Das malerische Werk, Berlin, 1971, no. 66; and Fedja Anzelewsky, “Das Selbstbildnis von 1500”, in: id., Dürer-Studien. Untersuchungen zu den ikonographischen und geistesgeschichtlichen Grundlagen seiner Werke zwischen den beiden Italienreisen, Berlin, 1983, pp. 90–100.

7 A ndrea Mantegna, The Lamentation of Christ, ca. 1490, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan; Ronald Lightbown, Mantegna. With a complete catalogue of the paintings, drawings and prints, Oxford, 1986, Ill. 10, no. 23.

In this self-portrait originating some four years before his death, also believed to be his last self-portrait, Giovanni Segantini stages himself in the full, frontal pose of a half-length portrait. “The piercing gaze and the deep hollows of the eyes are accented by the high cheekbones and the broad forehead, and the base of the elongated nose wrinkling in concentration. The careful compositional layout and the even, technical, solid draftsmanship of the drawing as well as the use of a large-format, finely woven canvas and fine drawing implements lend the work the effect of a pastel-like grisaille painting. This is not a work of the class of a studio sketch, but claims the merits of a fully-fledged painting f urther attesting to this is the fact that Segantini had several expensive photographic reproductions made of it, which he distributed to friends and patrons.” 1 Aligned symmetrically down the vertical axis, the portrait is framed by a distant, deep-set skyline of mountains beneath a lofty sky. “Even though it may not be composed realistically, the decorative flatness of the jagged silhouette of mountains with their incorporeal shadowiness and the almost unmoving and dark sky conveys an almost menacing vespertine atmosphere.” 2 The thoroughly perpendicular and symmetrical “staging of the self has an exaggerated effect”, which the biographer of Segantini, writer and art critic Franz Servaes, first recognized. The latter noted: “The brow is reminiscent of an apostle’s and, in quoting his Italian colleague Primo Levi, ‘of an Assyrian king with the martyred expression of Christ’.” 3

With even features, a piercing gaze, and the stringency of

an icon, the subject is undoubtedly reminiscent of portrayals of Christ. The gold dust that the artist had once worked into the painting (but which is hardly perceptible today) also contributes to the impression of pseudo-sacredness. The entire attitude of the self-portrait is unambiguously christomorphic. It is also redolent of the idealized, exalted self-portrait Albrecht Dürer produced in 1500. Here, Dürer represented himself raising his hand in the form of a blessing, the salvator mundi, and wearing a coat with fur collar, but without the other attributes which unequivocally denote Christ (Ill. 1). The form gave way to numerous other so-called “theomorphic portraits.”4 These christomorphic and theomorphic portraits constitute a unique form of allegorical portrait in which the subject slips into the role of a historical or allegorical figure.5 “Dürer’s Self-Portrait at Twenty-Eight Years Old Wearing a Coat with Fur Collar is interpretable as a confessional image, as an imitatio Christi a form of supplicating self-abandonment, as a ‘complete absorption of self in the belief in God’.” 6 Segantini first identifies himself with Christ in his painting and accompanying drawing Dead Hero (Ill. 2). Inspired by Andrea Mantegna’s The Lamentation of Christ, the corpse in the work is rendered with the same extreme foreshortening.7 And yet, Segantini did not shy away from lending his own distinctive facial features to the figure of Christ.

Giovanni Segantini implicitly saw himself as a genius and deus artifex. In this sense, this later self-portrait from 1895 is designed to convey an explicit artistic concept: the maker is

Ill. 1

Albrecht Dürer

Self-Portrait at Twenty-Eight Years Old Wearing a Coat with Fur Collar, 1500 Oil on wood panel, 67 × 49 cm

Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Ill. 2

Dead Hero, ca. 1887

Conté crayon, ochre-colored pastel and gold-dust on paper, 33.8 × 21 cm

Segantini Museum, St. Moritz

Oil on canvas, 85.5 × 132 cm (upper frame), 151 × 131 cm (lower frame)

The Comfort of Faith (Religious Comfort) 1895/96 Il dolore confortato dalla fede

1 S egantini, “Was ist die Kunst”, cited in: Segantini 1909 (1934), p. 4 2.

2 S egantini, “Aus dem Tagebuch”, Savognin, 1 st January, 1890, cited in: Segantini 1909 (1934), p. 54.

3 L etter from Segantini to Domenico Tumiati, 5th June, 1896, cited in: Segantini 1909 (1934), p. 84.

4 Z elger 1999, p. 177.

5 L etter from Segantini to Domenico Tumiati (cf. n. 3), p. 84.

6 R ichard Muther, Studien und Kritiken, Vienna, 1901, p. 103.

7 S ervaes 1902 (1920), p. 2 12.

8 Günter Metken, “Segantinis ‘Glaubenstrost’ –ein profanes Andachtsbild”, in: Idea, Jahrbuch der Hamburger Kunsthalle, III, 1984, p. 1 23.

9 I bid., pp. 127–128.

“When I wanted to console a couple grieving for their dead child, I painted The Comfort of Faith” 1 , wrote Giovanni Segantini. However, he amplified the genre scene in a complex Symbolist framework: weeping at the grave of their daughter, the parents confront her incomprehensible death. The lower section of the two-part work shows a snowbound landscape with a view of Maloja, set against Val Maroz in Bregaglia. Segantini would render this peak soon thereafter in Death, the right panel of his Alpine Triptych, though it was given a wider frame in that composition (see p. 194). A stone wall and thin ironwork gate enclose the cemetery of Maloja, where Segantini himself would be buried only a few years later. Constituting the main subject, the darkly clad parents mourn at the fresh grave of their child. The father kneels at the cross, despairing, his face buried in his hands. Supporting herself on the pillar of the gate, the stooping, griefstricken mother bends her head toward her shoulder. In her right hand, she holds a letter, while the left rests consolingly on the head of her husband. The head of Christ, Christ Pantocrator, appears on the adjacent grave, where the plot is already covered in snow. Christ the Redeemer symbolizes deliverance and eternal life. To the left, three figures walk down the snowy path: two black-clad women bent in lamentation and a small child dressed in bright clothes. They emblematize the three ages and the path of life. Three black crows hover low over the blanket of snow: metaphors for mortality. Meanwhile, the snow itself is a symbol for death: “Onerous and funereal, the snow blankets the earth like a shroud covering death”, Segantini wrote in 1890, in his diary.2 Not everything sinks under the heavy drifts of snow. The crests of the hills are fringed with evergreen pine trees, alluding to spring and burgeoning nature. “The conifers are little dwarf pine trees in a deep green shade, and because they alone protrude from the snow, vivid and green, I had to think of hope (comfort)”, Segantini wrote in 1896.3 The scene in the cemetery in the foreground and the evening snowscape of the mountains in the background form a formal and conceptual unit. “The human being finds security in nature, and the two are in harmony with one other.” 4 Death is in dialog with eternal life, with the cycle of nature.

Having set behind the mountains, the sun bathes the scene in a pale, cold light. Segantini vividly described the chromatics of the image: “The indefinite colors of a late sunset define the painting. The warm western sky illuminates the snow covering the ground. The deep blue reflexes of the eastern sky are also discernible in its depths. The mountains in the background are bluish, encased in shadow, and the sun set behind them some time ago. Like plated gold in the last rays of the sun, a cloud triumphs high up in the upper half

of the sky. […] The angels that you see are made up of the same colors and have the same consistency as the shadowy clouds.” 5

The smaller, upper panel shows two symmetrically opposed angels with massive outstretched wings, carrying aloft the dead body of the girl between them. The heaven-bound creatures act as a convoy for the deceased on her journey to Paradise. Like an altar painting, the panel is framed with a flat arch on top, which adds to the sacredness of the imagery. Segantini elevates the earthly scene of the cemetery with this allegorical lunette painting. The two-component design of the painting provoked early debate. Richard Muther criticized: “The soft melancholy shapes of an English aestheticism do not fit into the austere solitude of the hard, primeval largesse of Nature.” 6 And Franz Servaes added in 1902: “The lunette could be entirely omitted; one would hardly miss it. The two angels with the delicate corpse of the child are decorative, crowning the painting as a whole. And they are sensitively felt. But they hardly awaken sentiments that have not already been aroused. Perhaps they even manifest too blatantly what has only been hinted at in the comforting impression of the church yard scene.” 7

The Comfort of Faith is reminiscent of a votive painting. Günter Metken pointed out that the subject of the mourning relatives at the gravesite was a popular theme in the 19th century, and “more concretely, in the bourgeois realism of the Pre-Raphaelites and academic painting.” 8 The assumption of the body into Heaven t he ascension of the spirit a lso belonged to the iconography of spiritual departure and life after death, imagery frequently encountered in cemeteries of the period. Moreover, the painting is also reminiscent of the complex tabernacles inspired by pantheism t he works of Caspar David Friedrich and German Romanticism: “The wintry emptiness as the stage of death, the snow as a shroud, the funeral procession of darkly clad forms, the cemeteries standing open, as threshold between the afterlife and an otherworldly parvis, cemetery entrances as barriers between this afterworld”, and finally the “landscape and the vast, empty sky as the deeply symbolic echo chamber of emotion.” 9

Hamburger Kunsthalle

Image Credits

If the original images do not hail from the owners cited, or where addenda are necessary, their sources are listed here. All other images were generously provided by public and private collections or come from personal archives.

Aargauer Kunsthaus Aarau, Gottfried Keller Foundation, Jörg Müller, Aarau p. 189

bpk, Bildagentur für Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte, Berlin p. 76 (Ill. 2)

bpk / Alinari Archives / Roli, Ghigo for Alinari p. 167

bpk / Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek, Munich pp. 141, 170 (Ill. 1)

bpk / Hamburger Kunsthalle, Elke Walford p. 179

bpk / Musée d’Orsay, Paris pp. 98 (Ill. 2), 129 (Ill. 2) bpk / Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig p. 107 bpk / Scala p. 177 bpk / Berlin State Museums, Alte Nationalgalerie p. 169

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Segantini_ Maloja.jpg , photo: Adrian Michael, 2007 p. 30 (Ill. 4)

Paolo Durastante, Lecco p. 60 (Ill. 1)

Fondazione IRCCS Ca’ Granda, Ospedale Maggiore Politecnico, Milan p. 181

Alexander Flury, Foto Flury, Pontresina p. 43 (Ill. 14)

Foto Flury, Pontresina pp. 34 (Ill. 6, 7), 69, 74 (Ill. 1, 2), 79, 87, 88 (Ill. 1), 89, 99, 105, 111, 113, 115, 123 (Ill. 1), 125, 137, 143, 151, 155, 156 (Ill. 1), 170 (Ill. 2), 171, 173 (Ill. 3), 187 (Ill. 1), 190 (Ill. 1, 2), 191, 192 (Ill. 3), 193, 194 (Ill. 4), 195

Galleria Civica G. Segantini, Arco p. 39 (Ill. 11)

Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome p. 93

Courtesy Galleria Sacerdoti, Milan, Studio Mari di Galbiati Simone p. 157

Steve Gyurina, Melrose, Massachusetts p. 85

Immagini d’arte Saporetti, Milan p. 175

Kulturarchiv Oberengadin, Samedan pp. 20, 48/49, 50/51

Kunsthalle Bremen, Department of Prints and Drawings, Lars Lohrisch p. 152 (Ill. 2)

Kunsthaus Zurich p. 96 (Ill. 1)

Kunstmuseum Basel, Martin P. Bühler p. 119

Museo Vincenzo Vela, Ligornetto / Mauro Zeni p. 67

NMWA/DNPartcom, Tokyo pp. 75, 97

Paul Padrutt, St. Moritz p. 52

Mauro Ranzani, Milan p. 55

Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam p. 135

Royal Museum of Fine Arts Belgium, Brussels, photo: Cussac p. 109

Kurt Sigrist, Sarnen p. 139 (Ill. 2)

SIK-ISEA, Zurich pp. 33 (Ill. 5), 63, 149

Filippo Simonetti, Brunate p. 18

Skira editore, Milan p. 70 (Ill. 1)

Published by the Giovanni Segantini Foundation, St. Moritz

Book Concept: Beat Stutzer, Chur Translation (German to English): Selene States, State of the Art Translation, London

Copy Editing: State of the Art Translation, London

Design and Typeset: Guido Widmer, Zurich

Proofreading: State of the Art Translation, London

Lithography, Printing, and Binding: Grafisches Centrum Cuno, Calbe

Cover Image: Detail of Midday in the Alps, 1892 (p. 1 45)

The spread detail views of the works in the prelims have been taken from the following paintings: pp. 2/3: Cows at the Water Trough (1888), pp. 4/5: Dead Fawn (1892), pp. 6/7: Ave Maria Crossing the Lake (1886), pp. 8/9: The Hay Harvest (1888/89 / 1889), pp. 10/11: Return from the Woods (1890), pp. 12/13: Alpine Landscape (1898/99)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, transmitted in any form or by any means, including translation, photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Verlag Scheidegger & Spiess AG Niederdorfstrasse 54 8001 Zurich Switzerland www.scheidegger-spiess.ch

English Edition

isbn 978-3-85881-783-9

German Edition isbn 978-3-85881-522-4

Italian Edition isbn 978-3-85881-784-6