Gaetano Previati

Gaetano Previati (1852–1920) was a leading Italian Symbolist Divisionist painter whose mystical religious and allegorical canvases — Maternity (1890–1891), The Madonna with Lilies, the Quattro Tempi — anchored the metaphysical wing of Italian Divisionism. Trained at the Brera, Previati exhibited Maternity at the first Triennale di Milano in 1891, where its long-stroke Divisionist technique applied to a religious subject scandalized academic critics and rallied the new movement.

Previati painted with long, threadlike strokes of pure color rather than the dot-like touch of Pellizza or Segantini, producing luminous, almost incandescent surfaces in pale silvery tonalities. His subjects favored Marian devotion, allegory, and Dantean themes.

Previati provided the theoretical and spiritual core of the Italian Divisionist movement and influenced the Futurists, who acknowledged him as a precursor.