Italiensk folkeliv 1880s

Adolph Kittendorff made this print, called "Italiensk folkeliv," or "Italian Folk Life," sometime in the mid-19th century. The image depicts a scene of everyday life, likely in the countryside. But its real subject is a set of social relations. We can see visual cues typical of genre scenes, particularly from the period of national romanticism. Genre painting was often associated with social conservatism in this period. But how are we to interpret the scene? Italy in the 19th century was in the middle of a decades-long struggle for unification. The image may be referring to this. The standing figures evoke ideas of labor, as the seated mother and child evoke ideas of domesticity and family. As art historians, our work is to reconstruct such contexts through archival research and careful attention to the visual codes of the time. Art, after all, is always made within and against the social and institutional forces of its day.