Segantini 19: Le cattive madri – Die bösen Mütter, 1894

Giovanni Segantini briefly turned away from the motif of good mothers with the two pictures "The Bad Mothers" and "The Punishment of the Lustful". They address the punishment and atonement of mothers who reject their motherhood. He used a literary model for the two paintings. With these two works, Giovanni definitively placed himself in Symbolism.

Im audio you listen to the poem «Nirvana» on German, which was translated into Italian by Luigi Illica, a good acquaintance of Giovanni Segantini. It served the painter as a model for his paintings "The Evil Mothers" and "The Punishment of the Lustful" created on the alp. The audio file can be found at the back of the pictures.