The Viaticum is an exemplary painting of the Divisionist phase by Cesare Maggi, which began at the end of the century after the visit to the Milanese retrospective dedicated in November 1899 to Giovanni Segantini, who died two months earlier. The impact with Segantini's manner is even dazzling, so much so that he immediately leaves for the Engadine in search of the blinding brightness that only the boundless high mountain scenarios are able to offer. In 1904, the artist moved from Turin to La Thuile, Valle d'Aosta, preferably working en plein air in often prohibitive situations and regularly sending his production to Alberto Grubicy, to whom he has been bound by a contract since 1900. Dated 1911, close to the abandonment of La Thuile and the detachment from Grubicy, Il viaiatico welcomes the sad procession of sparse and tiny dark shapes silhouetted in the prevailing light; led by a priest recognizable by his habit and the high cross, the procession moves from a lonely hut drowned in snow and sets out towards nowhere. The radical resizing of the figures is an expedient to underline the undeniable impotence of the human being in the face of a grandiose, irrepressible, overwhelming Nature.