Garibaldi at Sant’Angelo (Capua)

The painting comes from the collection of Enrico Piceni, the discerning art lover and journalist who was also the driving force behind the important series of monographic studies on 19th-century masters published by Arnoldo Mondadori in the 1930s. It is a replica of the work commissioned by Cesare Sala and shown at the Esposizione di Belle Arti dell’Accademia di Brera in 1861 with the title Garibaldi on the Hill over Sant’Angelo (1861, Milan, Civiche Raccolte Storiche). It portrays Garibaldi on the high ground overlooking the plain of the River Volturno, where the outline of the town of Capua can be discerned. Two mounted soldiers on the right seem to be waiting for the general as he pauses pensively on the spot where his army of volunteers has just won a heroic victory. Garibaldi was soon after to meet Vittorio Emanuele II at Teano and hand over the conquered territories, thus marking the end of the expedition of his one thousand volunteers and the beginning of the Kingdom of Italy. Unquestionably the greatest leader of the Risorgimento, Garibaldi appears in the history painting of Gerolamo Induno as an epic symbol and a very human figure at the same time. In this work he stands out in isolation against the sun-drenched landscape of southern Italy but displays the informality of the ordinary mortal in the way he holds the cigar between his fingers and the natural pose of the arm resting on the hilt of his sword. The realism of this portrait is inseparably interwoven with the heroic character of its subject, thus endowing the work with the unmistakable power to bring the events and personages of contemporary history closer to the life of the common people, as shown also in the canvases of the painter’s brother Domenico Induno.