During his brief but fruitful lifetime, Giovanni Segantini (1858–99) achieved considerable fame. Museums including Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery and such collectors as Jacob Stern, the director of Levi Strauss & Co., bought his work, which often applied Symbolism to beguiling, sometimes melancholic pastoral landscape. The world was intrigued by this reclusive artist who, born in the tiny village of Arco in the Trentino (then ruled by Austria), …