Alessandro Battaglia

Alessandro Battaglia was born in Roma on 26 April 1870. It was his mother, Clelia Bompiani, and his uncle Augusto Bompiani who encouraged him from an early age to pursue a career as a painter. He thus became a pupil of well-known painters such as Cesare Maccari and Ludovico Seitz, while at the same time developing a strong admiration for the emotionally charged and dramatic painting of Domenico Morelli.

At just 13, he exhibited a "Ritratto della sorella" at an event of the society "Cultori e amatori di Roma", and from there began a long career of exhibitions in Italy and abroad. In the 1890s he exhibited several times in Germany, and some of his works were sold to the Museum of Magdeburgo and in Monaco.

Throughout his nineteenth-century output, Battaglia remained closely tied to the Macchiaioli and to realism in his subjects, depicting mainly peasant women and shepherdesses. From the early twentieth century, however, he moved towards the ideas of Divisionism. In 1904 he was among the founders of the group "XXV della campagna romana", which aimed to return to landscape painting in a realist and non-academic sense. In this period he explored rural motifs, rendering them in both oil painting and his watercolours.

His pictorial language did not bend to the renewed conceptions of the avant-garde; instead, he consistently continued to pursue an academic painting strongly influenced by that of Morelli.

From 1913, Battaglia worked as a teacher at the Liceo artistico di Roma, and in the same year he also became a member of the Accademia di San Luca. He died in Roma on 22 April 1940.