After Lunch (The Trellis)

In 1868 Florence was the capital of Italy, a job it held for only six years, and the city was being torn up to look the part. The old walls were coming down, new avenues were going through, and the cost of living in the centre climbed. Lega had settled at Piagentina, farmland along the Arno just past all that noise, and this is an ordinary afternoon there.

Four women sit under a vine-covered pergola in the heat while a servant comes out with the coffee on a tray. The sun is behind them, so faces and dresses fall into broad flat areas of light and shade and the whole thing slows down. Lega called it An Afternoon. The name everybody uses now, The Trellis, only attached itself in 1923, nearly 30 years after his death, and it points at the place rather than the hour. The Friends of Brera, an association of the museum's supporters, gave the canvas to the collection in 1931.