Stella and Piero

Around Florence and Prato in the 1880s, women and girls plaited wheat straw at home by the metre, feeding a hat trade that sold Tuscan straw across Europe. That is the work in Stella's hands here, dried stalks going through her fingers while Piero leans over the retaining wall behind her and pesters her with one of them. Vittorio Corcos painted it in 1889, and it is an unusual picture for him. He made his living on polished society portraits, and this one comes out of French naturalism, the country subject he almost never touched. It stayed in private hands until 2018, when the Italian state bought it as it went through the export office in Bologna, and it went on show in the modern gallery at the Pitti that July, in room 20.