Francesco Hayez: Italy is woman

Between 1848 and 1849 revolutionary uprisings swept across Europe. In Italy, the uprisings of popular rebellion against authoritarian power corroborated the patriotic battle to obtain the country's unity. "Meditation” is a symbol of the aspirations stirring the Risorgimento.

The painting depicts a female figure wearing a white dress with a wide neckline. Immersed in a sober and suspended atmosphere, the woman holds a bound volume and a cross in her lap.

The face in shadow highlights the torment of the woman who, with a determined gaze, looks towards the spectator and beyond. The expression is resolute but contrite.

The first element that clarifies the identity of the person portrayed is the breast that the young woman leaves bare: she is none other than Italy, represented as the nursing mother, ready to nourish her children.

The red inscription "Storia d'Ita[lia]", visible on the spine of the volume, reveals the symbolic and political meaning of the image: a patriotic message indicating the lively hope, fully shared by the artist, of creating a nation free from foreign domination.

The red inscription on the wood of the cross alludes to the bloodshed: "18.19.20.21.22 March/1848", the dates of the Five Days of Milan, when Italian patriots tried to drive out the Austrian soldiers in an attempt to achieve the desired independence.

The image is rendered with great dramatic and sentimental force typical of the Romantic movement, of which Hayez is one of the greatest exponents, and effectively represents the painter's disappointment at the failure of the Risorgimento uprisings in 1848.

The charm of this work lies in the perfect combination of political criticism and existential restlessness. The painting should have been named "Italy in 1848", but due to Austrian censorship it was changed by the artist to "The Meditation".

It was from Count Giacomo Franco of Verona, that Achille Forti bought the canvas; the second version of the "Meditation" Francesco Hayez had painted a year earlier for the poet Andrea Maffei.