Describe the characteristics of the 1891–1895: Ambasciatori della Fame in this artwork's History.
Following the Italian Risorgimento, the peasant and bourgeois classes of the new country had an uncertain relationship.: 140  Some bourgeois intellectuals bemoaned the lowering of Italian culture, while artists—particularly the divisionists—brought social themes into their artwork. Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo tried to unite the techniques of divisionism with the influence of the farmers' mutual aid society he had joined in his hometown of Volpedo and the socialist writings of the Second International.: 141 Pellizza began to work on a study for Ambasciatori della Fame (Ambassadors of Hunger) in 1891, after participating in a workers' protest in Turin. The scene made such an impression on him that he noted it in his diary:This social question imposes. Many are dedicated to it and study it swiftly to resolve it. Even art should not be alienated from this movement to a destination that is still unknown but which is understood to be better than present conditions.: 2 
The first sketch was completed in April 1891. The subject was a workers' revolt in Piazza Malaspina in Volpedo, with three subjects placed at the front of the protest. The scene is viewed from above, and the figures are distributed on orthogonal lines. This core composition remained in successive versions of the work, each of which presents the three figures in front of a mass of people in the background and a dark backdrop. The shadow stretching out to the ambassador's feet is likely the palazzo on Piazza Malaspina, where the workers are going to make their demands.: 144 Pellizza made numerous other intermediary works between the first drawing of Ambasciatori della Fame and Fiumana. He also made Piazza Malaspina a Volpedo in 1891, which represents the topography of Volpedo as a preparatory background for the subsequent versions.: 169  He made two other versions of Ambasciatori della Fame, one dated 1892 and the other 1895. The 1892 sketch is similar to the first. However, Pellizza added a group of women to the 1892 drawing, who are juxtaposed with the male workers.: 356 
The last draft before La Fiumana is the 1895 version of Ambasciatori, created after three quiet years on brown paper as a charcoal and gesso drawing. Pelliza wrote of it: The ambassadors are two that advance, seriously, across the little piazza toward the noble palazzo that projects the shadow at their feet [...] Hunger advances with its multiple poses—they are men, women, the old, the young: all hungry to go and reclaim that which is their right–serene and calm, at rest, as those who know to ask more or less for what they are owed—they have suffered greatly. The hour of ransom has arrived, so they think, but they do not wish to obtain it with force, but with reason. Someone could raise a fist in an act of menace, but not this crowd, with him. They trust their ambassadors—the intelligent men. [...] A woman hurries to show her emaciated child; another, a third, is trying in vain to breastfeed her child—another shouts curses.: 356 
In the passage above, the artist underlined his wish to follow a general theory: not only to represent the citizens of Volpedo, but also an entire part of society that has "suffered greatly" and that intends to claim its rights through a struggle "serene, calm, and reasoned.": 356
Turin Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo Second International divisionist Volpedo Risorgimento divisionism