Via de' Malcontenti, Florence

Telemaco Signorini's Via de' Malcontenti — Street of the Malcontents — records one of Florence's notorious back streets, historically named because condemned prisoners were led along it to execution at the nearby Bargello. Signorini was a leading member of the Macchiaioli, the Italian movement that paralleled French Realism and early Impressionism in its embrace of plein-air observation and contemporary subjects. His late Florentine street scenes combine the documentary impulse of social realism with a painterly sensitivity to urban atmosphere: the particular quality of light in Florence's narrow medieval streets.

The characteristic Macchiaioli technique of broad, flat patches (macchie) of color and tone resolves the complex urban space: stone walls, receding perspective, human figures all handled as tonal relationships rather than descriptive inventory. The palette is warm-cool contrasts appropriate to shaded Italian stonework.