Focus on this artwork and analyze the Reception and legacy.
Pellizza always intended The Fourth Estate to be publicly displayed. It was first unveiled to the public at the Prima Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Decorativa Moderna, held in Turin in 1902. The work received no recognition (the jury, which included Pellizza's sculptor friend Leonardo Bistolfi, awarded Davide Calandra and his Monument to the Prince Amedeo), and it was not bought by a museum. Although The Fourth Estate was passed over by art critics, it was applauded by other painters and labor organizers.: 153  The poet Giovanni Cena wrote that "it is something that will remain and not fear time, because time will aid it."
In 1903, the painting was reproduced in the Milanese journal Leggetemi! Almanacco per la pace as an artistic frame for an article by Edmondo De Amicis. It was reproduced on May 1, 1903, in the journal Unione and on May 1, 1904, in the periodical L'Avanguardia socialist. It was used in 1905 as a symbol of the working class in Avanti! della domenica , a daily magazine of the Italian Socialist Party. In 1906, the Vogherese journal L'Uomo che ride made a postcard of the painting on the direction of Ernesto Majocchi, a good friend of Pellizza, with the "most grateful" consent of the artist.: 53  While the painting still did not garner much acclaim from art critics, it became more and more well known through its numerous reproductions and prints in socialist newspapers.
Meanwhile, with the wide diffusion of the work, Pellizza tried several times in vain to exhibit The Fourth Estate. Exhibition committees routinely refused to exhibit the painting during those early years due to its subject matter. Pellizza would only see it exhibited once, in 1907 at the Society for the Promotion of Arts in Rome, before his death by suicide in June of that year.After Pellizza's death, The Fourth Estate remained the property of his family, out of public view.: 154  In 1920, it was displayed in a retrospective show dedicated to Pellizza at the Galleria Pesaro in Milan, thanks to the growth of leftist culture during the Biennio Rosso. It was a decisive show for the physical future of the work; the painting impressed Guido Marangoni, a socialist councilor of Milan and art critic. With the municipal counselor Fausto Costa, Marangoni managed to purchase it in 1920 through public subscription for 50,000 lire. After its acquisition, the painting entered the collection of Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Milan and was displayed in the ballroom of Sforza Castle.
During the Italian fascist regime in the 1930s, the painting was rolled up and stored in the basement of the castle. After the war, it was reinstated for public view in 1954 and was displayed initially in the Palazzo Marino. Its utopian representation of social progress was popular during the ongoing political struggle between the Christian Democrat party and the Italian socialist and communist parties during the 1950s.: 154  The acclaim of art critic Corrado Maltese, who declared in 1960 that the painting was "the greatest monument that the workers' movement has ever been able to boast in Italy," also kept The Fourth Estate in the public eye.
With the development of mass media, The Fourth Estate was popularized outside of artistic and literary circles, appearing even in film. Pelizza's compositional choices became a touchstone for leftist Italian artists in the 1940s and '50s: Giuseppe De Santis used the image of workers walking forward in a line for his neorealist 1947 film, Tragic Hunt, and Renato Guttuso used The Fourth Estate to compose his (now destroyed) 1953 oil painting Occupazione di terre in Sicilia. From that point on, the painting became a feature of numerous exhibitions and research projects, notably including monographs by Aurora Scotti and Gabriella Pelissero.  Bernardo Bertolucci's epic historical film of 1976, 1900, displayed the opening credits over a slow zoom of The Fourth Estate.: 11 After undergoing a restoration by Giovanni Rossi in 1976, The Fourth Estate remained at the Palazzo Marino until 1980, when it moved to the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Milan. It was displayed in a gallery room entirely devoted to divisionism. It remained there until December 2010, when it was moved to its current location, Milan's Museo del Novecento. (The earlier Fiumana version is held in the Pinacoteca di Brera, also in Milan.)
The Museo del Novecento considers the painting one of its most valuable masterpieces, and the architect Italo Rota was commissioned to design a room to house the display of the painting. The display, however, was criticized for its awkward and constrained space. The museum had decided to make the work viewable to the public, without a ticket, but not to display the work in the museum's main lobby, leading to Institutional Critique of the museum.Still, The Fourth Estate itself is held up as an exemplar of Italian social realism at the turn of the 20th century. Modern critics have also noted its contradiction between socialist symbolism and Catholic nostalgia.
Milan Tragic Hunt Turin 1900 social realism neorealist public subscription Galleria d'Arte Moderna Fourth Estate symbolism Corrado Maltese Edmondo De Amicis Sforza Castle Italo Rota monograph 20th century Museo del Novecento Pinacoteca di Brera Leonardo Bistolfi Guido Marangoni Palazzo Marino Institutional Critique Avanti! della domenica Ernesto Majocchi Prima Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Decorativa Moderna Giovanni Cena zoom Giuseppe De Santis Christian Democrat party Biennio Rosso Renato Guttuso working class Italian Socialist Party Galleria Pesaro divisionism Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Milan fascist regime Davide Calandra Bernardo Bertolucci the working class