Plinio Nomellini

Plinio Nomellini (1866–1943) was an Italian Divisionist painter and engraver who moved from late Macchiaioli realism into the leading edge of Italian Divisionism in the 1890s. Trained at the Florence Academy under Giovanni Fattori, Nomellini absorbed the Macchiaioli macchia technique before encountering Pellizza da Volpedo and Gaetano Previati and reshaping his manner around scientific Divisionist principles applied to socially engaged subjects, Symbolist allegories, and Tuscan and Ligurian coastal landscapes.

Nomellini painted with broken Divisionist touch, brilliant tonal harmonies of orange and silver-blue, and an expressive lyricism distinct from the more rigorous touch of Pellizza or Morbelli. His subjects span workers, mothers, children, and luminous Mediterranean coastlines.

Nomellini provided the lyrical-Symbolist wing of Italian Divisionism and shaped early-twentieth-century Tuscan and Ligurian painting.