I was looking at an edition of the Sicilian writer Giovanni Verga‘s Novelle Rusticane illustrated by Alfredo Montalti yesterday when I came across this remarkable edition of another book of that author’s stories, Vita dei Campi (Life in the Fields), illustrated by an artist named Arnaldo Ferraguti. The illustrations are evidently based on Ferraguti’s paintings, some of which are in color, the rest in black and white (though whether this is how they were printed, or whether the digitizers chose to scan just a few in color, is not something I can tell. As we saw with Gavarni, the scanned images could easily be in color, unbeknownst to online readers.)

I am more struck, in any case, by the realism of Ferraguti’s images—some of which are idyllic, but the better part of which show the wrenching poverty and misery to be seen in 19th century Sicily. Some of these images—such as the ones depicting crying children—are downright heartbreaking, and seem to have the documentary quality of a modern war photography, as opposed to the ideal, beautifying quality typical of paintings. Ferraguti’s stark choice of subject comports with Verga’s bent towards unvarnished realism, making the illustrations feel unusually modern.