Medieval motif dates back to an intermediate period of the artist's activity, a mature phase in which, assimilated and elaborated in a personal key the Ranzonian and Cremonian model, he omits the truth in favor of literary contents full of lyricism, with a visionary atmosphere. and nostalgic, characterized by an unscrupulous use of color and sign not far from the contemporary experiments of Gaetano Previati, with whom until 1885 he shared the Milanese atelier in Corso Venezia proceeding in significant commonality of intent. Set on the inclined structure of the shaft on the left, under whose branches a seated girl entertains a group of happy young people accompanying the lively story with sweeping gestures of the delicate arms, the painting plays on complementary contrasts capable of radiating the entire surface with light. To the violet note, which dominates the tree and the dresses of the listening girls, is contrasted by the vibrant yellow, dotted with white, of the sun-drenched field, while from the green of the thin filament grass, which rests in the half-light, stands out the red for the clothes and hats of the pages. Solutions not far from those used in No. 317 of the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Milan, on display at the first Triennale di Brera in 1891 and harshly criticized for the crudeness of the subject addressed without any pietism - two orphans in front of a tomb - and for the approximation of the painting that it still seems to be in an embryonic state. If the brushstroke of the lawn of N.317, thin and broken, is comparable to that used in I novellieri, in the latter the formal and chromatic synthesis is however much more extreme, to return not a real image but the inconsistency of an apparition of the mind, emphasized by the languid poses and slow movements of the figures, graceful and vague as illusions emerging from a remote and idyllic past.