Odoardo Borrani (1833-1905)

Although relatively unknown outside his home country, Odoardo Borrani is widely considered in Italy to be one of the most important Macchiaiolo painters. His style was characterized above all by a restrained sensitivity, which allowed him to conjure from modest subjects works of great beauty, notable for both their quiet expressiveness and acute sensitivity to light.

Following a period of study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, where he enrolled in 1853, Borrani forged close friendships with artists such as Telemaco Signorini and Diego Martelli, whom he joined in the course of the trips around the Tuscan countryside which the painters organized in order to paint landscapes en plein air. As a young man, Borrani was an enthusiastic supporter of the new aesthetic approach known as the "macchia", a theory based around correctly rendering the natural effects of daylight with contrasting and simplified patches of lighter and darker colors. In the years immediately thereafter he came into contact with Silvestro Lega, an encounter which transformed his style. More meticulous and finished, his paintings focused increasingly on the quiet intimacy of domestic life.