group of 19th-century Florentine and Neopolitan painters who reacted against the rule-bound Italian academies of art and looked to nature for instruction. The Macchiaioli felt that patches (Italian: macchia) of colour were the most significant aspect of painting. They believed that the effect of a painting on the spectator should derive from the painted surface itself, rather than from any ideological message or narrative. The Macchiaioli used a sketch technique to record their initial impressions of nature—often as seen from a distance—by means of colour and light. Their theory, similar to that of the French Impressionists (Impressionism), was even more concerned with the experimental use of colour.

During a period of 20 years, the Macchiaioli produced startlingly fresh and vivid paintings. The most outstanding artist of the group was the Florentine Giovanni Fattori (1825–1908), who attained brilliant effects of light and colour by the use of strong colour patches. Other important painters of the group were the critic and theoretician Telemaco Signorini (1853–1901), who used colour with great sensitivity in his usually socially conscious scenes; Silvestro Lega (1826–95), who combined a clearly articulated handling of colour patches with a poetic feeling for his subject; and Raffaello Sernesi (1838–66) and Giuseppe Abbati (1836–68), both of whom also used colour in a highly original manner.