Silvestro Lega (December 8, 1826 – September 21, 1895)
Silvestro Lega was an Italian artist, one of the main representatives of the Macchiaioli movement.

Silvestro Lega was born in Modigliana to a landowner’s family. From 1838 he studied at the College of the Piarist Order, where he showed a great inclination for drawing. In 1843 he moved to Florence, where he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in the class of E. Pollastrini and studied in the studios of L. Mussini and A. Ciseri. In 1848-49 he took part in the Risorgimento movement, fought in Tuscany and Lombardy, and was a follower of the ideas of the philosopher and politician Giuseppe Mazzini.

Having returned to Florence in 1850, Lega continued his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts with G. Bezzuolli. He received a silver medal for his painting “David Playing Before Saul”. In the late 1850s, he became close to Giovanni Fattori, Telemaco Signorini and Adriano Cecioni, forming the basis of the Macchiaioli movement, which opposed the academic style in art.

In the mid-1850s, Silvestro Lega tried to work in monumental painting, painting churches in Tredozzo (1856) and Modigliana (1857), where the influence of romanticism was felt. In 1861, the All-Italian Exhibition was held in Florence, where Lega showed the works he created in the late 1850s. works on themes from the events of the struggle for the unification of Italy – “Ambush of the Bersaglieri in Lombardy” (1859-61, “General Garibaldi in Varese in the Glorious Days of May 26” (1859), “Italian Bersaglieri Leading Austrian Captives” (c. 1860). Lega received the second prize of the exhibition, making an important contribution to the development of the historical genre of Italian painting.

Since 1861, Lega worked en plein air on the banks of the Arno River. He painted mainly landscapes, genre scenes, sketches from life, paying special attention to the depiction of the atmosphere of light and air.

After 1872, Silvestro Lega practically stopped painting due to a sharp deterioration in his eyesight. He was also unable to teach. In 1875, Lega tried to create a gallery of modern art in Florence, but did not find financial support.