Pellizza da Volpedo is especially known as the author of the Fourth Estate, a symbolic painting of late nineteenth-century Italian painting and an icon of modernity. The synthesis of the painter's formative experiences is Memory of a Sorrow , which the artist gave to Carrara as a sign of gratitude for the teachings he received from Cesare Tallone in Bergamo between 1888 and 1890. The meaning of the work goes beyond the choice of theme of the reader, very widespread at the time: in the lucid gaze of the Volpedese Santina Negri the painter expresses the pain for the disappearance of his sister Antonietta, who died in October 1889. The setting of the portrait derives from Tallone, while the construction of the space for planes of bright colour, spread in large fields, recalls the painting of the Macchiaioli.