Gaetano Chierici

By the time Gaetano Chierici was selling well, the buyers were in Paris, Berlin, London and New York, and what they wanted was the inside of an Italian cottage. Born in Reggio Emilia in 1838, he trained at the academies of Modena, Florence and Bologna, then settled into a single subject he could paint better than almost anyone: family life around the open hearth.

His pictures are crowded with children, animals and small domestic dramas, every copper pot and floor tile rendered in patient detail. The mood is warm, often sentimental, and it traveled. He showed at the Royal Academy in London through the late 1870s, and his canvases fetched high prices abroad while Italy was still finding its feet as a nation.

There was another side to him. Chierici directed the workers' drawing school in Reggio Emilia from 1882 to 1907, teaching ordinary people the craft, and in 1900 the painter of cosy hearthsides was elected the town's first Socialist mayor, serving two years.