The area: Maremma

Stretching from the south of the Chianti region all the way to the north of Rome, lies a jewel on the coast of Tuscany. This place, where the hill tops are crowned by medieval towns and the coast bears witness to the rise and fall of the Etruscan civilization, is called Maremma. The fascinating wilderness of Maremma offers a wide range of diversity in the landscape.

The rocky coastline is intermittently exchanged by small bays with sandy beaches, often surrounded by maritime pine trees. The country side goes from mountains to hills to flatlands.

For all the different aspects of the scenery, Maremma was an inspiration to the 19th century Italian impressionistic movement of the “Macchiaioli” and continues to be loved by landscape painters today.

The impressionistic movement of the Macchiaioli landscape painters

The Macchiaioli movement started as a reaction to the French Universal Exhibition in 1855, Paris. This exposition was an important first contact with the French landscape painters, bringing about a revival of painting the countryside and of the historical genre of painting in Italy. After a decade of experimenting the “chiaroscuro” technique (the practice of contrasting light and dark) on the landscape, a new movement came about in 1870; naturalism. The results hereof where evidenced particularly in Tuscany culminating in the 1976 exhibition in Florence, paying tribute to the Macchiaioli. The gallery of modern art in the ‘Palazzo Pitti’ in Florence hosts the largest collection of Macchiaioli painters.