The strike, of 1889, belongs to the Florentine period in which attitudes of lively participation in the problems of the workers were already manifested in Nomellini. Preceded by a series of pen and pencil sketches, referring to both the individual figures and the entire composition, the finished painting replaces the peasants armed with forks and scythes marching against the background of the countryside or mountain horizons - protagonists of the preliminary drawings - a stream of workers with an exasperated attitude beyond which the low volumes of the industrial warehouses and the high profiles of the chimneys stand out. The small oil, supported by a symphony of earthy and blue hues made intrinsically luminous by the frayed brushstrokes of the sky and the dusty road, is set on a diagonal compositional cut, which manages the multitude of men and women from which two characters stand out. a supportive hug. It is impossible not to notice in the shapes and attitudes of the couple in the foreground, who seem to collect and effectively channel the discontent of the mass behind, a fundamental precedent of Pellizza's Fourth Estate.