Abstract Verismo was the Italian version of realism, the literary movement espoused by such novelists as the brothers Goncourt and Emile Zola in France. 1870 had marked the end of an era for both countries: the Italians, having gained Rome as their capital, were now faced with the prosaic task of running a new nation beset with internal problems; and the French were painfully engaged in a similar endeavor after their disastrous defeat by the Prussians. In Italy as in France, the age of romantic dreaming and heroics was over.