Brief Biography-Giovanni Segantini was born in Arco by Lake Garda in 1858. A peasant family reared him after his father abandoned him as a child when his mother died. They sent him to the School of Art in Milan when they realised his drawing talents. After developing his skills in Milan, he retreated to the mountain village of Brianza, where he painted one of his most noted works, Ave Maria on the Lake. After that, he spent eight years at the remote Savognin in the Grison Alps, painting the lives of the mountaineers. There he painted his most impressive symbolic works before suddenly dying high up in a mountain hut.