Il castigo delle lussuriose

Il castigo delle lussuriose (The Punishment of the Lustful, 1896) is a study on cardboard related to Segantini's sustained meditation on karmic punishment and the cycle of sin and suffering drawn from his reading of Indian Vedic texts. Segantini produced several versions and studies of the punishment theme during the 1890s, of which The Punishment of Lust in Liverpool is the best-known. This version on cardboard at the Kunsthaus Zürich may be a preparatory study or a variant compositional experiment. The use of cardboard as support is significant: Segantini used it for studies and smaller-scale experimental works where the support's lower cost allowed freedom to explore compositional variations without the commitment of a full canvas. Working on cardboard also allowed him to work quickly, and some of his cardboard works have a spontaneity and freshness that the more finished canvases lack. By 1896 the punishment theme had become central to his late philosophical programme — the suspended, frozen women in barren Alpine trees representing souls condemned by their own choices to suffer in an icy limbo between death and rebirth.

The cardboard support absorbs paint differently from canvas — more immediately, with less flexibility — and Segantini's divisionist technique adapts accordingly. The surface texture is slightly rougher, and the strokes are more compact. The reduced scale of a study allows rapid development of the compositional idea without the sustained effort of a full canvas.