Gerolamo Induno (Milan 1825 – 1890), Horse

Gerolamo Induno (Milan 1825 – 1890) Horse Oil on canvas, 45 x 50 cm – with frame, 53 x 59 cm The sketch depicts a white saddled horse, seen in three-quarters view and captured in a pose of anticipation. The saddle is barely suggested, the dark mane and tail give the ensemble a sense of weight and physical presence. There is no rhetoric in this study: there is the concentration of someone observing a living subject and fixing it on canvas before it moves. From 1854 to 1855, Induno participated in the Crimean War in Alessandro La Marmora's bersaglieri corps and, as a painter-soldier, produced drawings, studies, and pictorial accounts which, upon his return home, he used for highly appreciated paintings for the patriotic sentiments expressed therein. This sketch finds a direct parallel in the work "Episode of the Crimean War" (formerly the Patriotic Collection of Milan), where the animal appears on the left, an immobile witness to the drama in a snowy landscape. The same posture of the steed recurs in "Cavalry troops rest by a house," another canvas in which Induno uses the preparatory study to construct a choral scene of greater narrative scope. The comparison between the sketch and the finished works reveals the artist's working method: the study is the starting point, the raw material from which to extract the convincing detail that will give credibility to the whole. Girolamo Induno was born in Milan in 1825 and was introduced to painting by his older brother Domenico; between 1839 and 1846, he attended Luigi Sabatelli's courses at the Brera Academy, immediately achieving considerable success. His training was immediately intertwined with the political tensions of the pre-unification decade: after the experience of the Milan barricades in 1848 and the defense of the Roman Republic in 1849, he became one of the most renowned and popular painter-soldiers, drawing inspiration from his lived experiences for numerous works created in the following decades. Wounded during the defense of Palazzo Barberini, which was attacked by the French, Induno remained in Rome for some time, protected first by the Fatebenefratelli friars and then by Count Giulio Litta, until he returned to Milan to continue his artistic activity. Gerolamo Induno's life is an adventurous novel: an active participant in the anti-Austrian uprisings of 1848, he shared exile with his brother in Switzerland before returning to Italy. The painter did not limit himself to witnessing historical events: he also fought valorously in the Crimean War in 1855, earning recognition for his courage, and his art evolved during this period, alternating the representation of battles with intimate and incisive portraits of historical figures, including numerous portraits of Garibaldi, who called him one of the most "intrepid and valiant fighters of Rome." Induno's connection with Garibaldian ideals was never merely instrumental or celebratory. In 1859, he enlisted as a Garibaldian officer in the Cacciatori delle Alpi group, continuing to record the chronicle of his experiences in drawings. Enlisting in the Garibaldian ranks, he definitively confirmed himself as the official interpreter of the Risorgimento epic, both for historical themes, such as "The Embarkation in Genoa of General Giuseppe Garibaldi" and "The Battle of Magenta," now at the Museo del Risorgimento in Milan, and for those in which the patriotic motif is mixed with themes of genre painting. Among the works that best embody this dual vocation, "The Departure of the Garibaldian," now at the Pinacoteca di Brera, condenses the full emotional weight of the Risorgimento era into a farewell scene: the hero departing, the family remaining, the private sacrifice that sustains the public cause. A similar tension runs through "Sad Premonition," also preserved at the Pinacoteca di Brera and dated 1862. In a modest room, a girl sitting on the bed contemplates the portrait of her beloved, a patriot who left for war, as evidenced by the bust of Garibaldi, prints with Hayez's "The Kiss," and a battle scene hanging by the window. In the same Brera collection are works that document the more epic side of his production, such as "A Great Sacrifice," while in the Quirinale Palace is preserved "Garibaldi and Medici before Vittorio Emanuele II," further proof of the institutional recognition that Induno's painting obtained from the highest commissions of the young kingdom. "Horse" fits into this logic naturally: it is not a work intended for the general public, but a working tool that reveals the painter at the moment of his greatest freedom. In the rapidity of the brushstrokes, in the choice to isolate the subject without context, in the care taken to render the weight and breath of the animal, one recognizes the hand of an artist who had learned to see "in the field" and who never stopped doing so. By participating in the Piedmontese expedition to Crimea, Induno filled entire albums with sketches and notes for paintings, from which much of his subsequent pictorial production was born.