Feeding Call

The work, executed in 1893 for Ferdinando Bocconi, a Milanese businessman who founded the “Luigi Bocconi” University, was shown at the Brera Triennale the following year. This painting was executed many years after the war of independence, in which De Albertis actively took part, and it depicts a simple scene of military life, imbued with a feeling of nostalgia and loneliness that seems to evoke the end of an era. The horses being called back into line to be fed and stabled for the night are the protagonists of this episode, which has a crepuscular atmosphere that is very different from the heroic slant of the numerous battle scenes habitually depicted by this artist. The work shows the influence of the artist’s youthful involvement with the Scapigliatura movement in Milan, since he adopts a loose, cursory style that is marked by the intense naturalism of the pair of galloping horses obediently obeying the soldier’s call. Military scenes of the Risorgimento and fashionable horse races became the artist’s signature subjects from 1855 on. However, his mature works were not very enthusiastically received by the critics, since they tended to be repetitive in theme, though they continued to be in great demand on the market, indicating how the ruling classes still appreciated Risorgimento subjects towards the end of the century.