Odoardo Borrani was born in 1833 to a Florentine family in Pisa. The family moved to Florence, where Odoardo was enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts and studied under Gaetano Bianchi, who was one of the most active Florentine restorers of the time. He acquired the opportunity to reinforce his skills on 14th/15th-century art.
Borrani was influenced by Macchiaioli, a group of Italian painters predominantly in Tuscany, who painted the outdoor scenery, captured natural light, and played with colours and shadows. The Macchiaioli were the first group of artists who developed a style based on the representation of light.
In the painting, we see two sand diggers depicted near the river Mugnone (along the Arno River in Tuscany). These workers extract sand from the riverbeds of the Arno to be used in the further construction of Florence. The painting is dominated by the colours green, beige, and yellow, with a beautiful reflection of light on the water and the harsh shadows accompanying it. Like every painter from the Macchiaioli group, he loved painting the outdoors and furthermore used techniques that made the atmosphere feel more dream-like with the play of light and shadows. We see a glass-like reflection of the workers on the water, which adds more realism to the scene. Ultimately, Borrani turns a simple day of hard work into a beautiful scene of light and shadow. By focusing on the sun hitting the riverbank, he gives the workers a sense of quiet dignity and makes a routine moment feel timeless.
This painting is an example of Odoardo’s artistic maturity, which was characterised by long preparatory graphic studies before the painting stage, in turn not fully executed en plein air as one might think.
For example, the Department of Prints and Drawings in the Uffizi conserves the rough sketch of the two sand diggers, on which the artists has noted the colours of their clothes and the rocks. In the margin, another note appears: Giovanni Brunetti/Villa Gori, proof that the painting was not an impromptu endeavour, but rather the end product of a carefully thought-out process.
Shy and introverted, Odoardo Borrani was one of the founders of the Macchiaiolo movement, even if he was not as famous as his colleagues. The intimate, meditative mood of his painting fully reflects his personality. Son of a humble painter, he started out as an apprentice in the workshop of Gaetano Bianchi, one of the most active Florentine restorers at the time. In those same years he also attended the Academy of Fine Arts, in 1858 winning the first prize for painting in the three-yearly competition. His early works were related to the historical romanticism current, although, in parallel, he also began experimenting with painting en plein air.
