Painting I Butteri

Joey Skee (January 29, 2013)

Depictions on Canvas of Italy’s Cowboys

(This is more a note to myself than a full-fledged blog post.)

The poster for this year’s “Cowboy Poetry Gathering” features Giuseppe Raggio’s [2]1864 painting “Al Fontanile” (The Water Tank). Raggio (1823-1916), along with Giovanni Fattori [3], were two Italian visual artists working in the second-half of the nineteenth century who were fascinated with i butteri.

Raggio and Fattori were part of the Macchiaioli [4] movement that, inspired by the Barbizon school, sought to change the direction of Italian art through its choice of en plein air painting outdoors and subject matter, which often focused on peasants and rural landscapes.

Cappata di cavalli nella campagna romana, Giuseppe Raggio

In turn their canvases contributed to the mystic of the Italian cowboys, similar to the work of Federick Remingtion in the United States.

Butteri e mandrie in Maremma (1894), Giovanni Fattori.