Mario Puccini

Mario Puccini (28 June 1869 – 18 June 1920) was an Italian Post-Impressionist painter who specialized in landscapes and village scenes. He was sometimes referred to as "The Italian Van Gogh".

Biography He was born in Livorno. His father was a baker. Puccini worked in his father's bakery and sketched as a hobby until his talent was noticed by Giovanni Fattori, who encouraged him to enroll at the Academy of Fine Arts of Florence, which he did, against parental objections, in 1884 when he was only fifteen. While there, he studied with Fattori and was influenced by the works of Silvestro Lega.

After graduating, he returned to Livorno and continued his studies at the "Scuola Libera del Nudo". In 1893, his family had him committed to a psychiatric hospital in Siena, citing depression and persecution mania as the justification. This process was stalled, for bureaucratic reasons, but the group persisted and his remains were finally placed there in 1988.

In 1949, a street in Quercianella was named after him.