Doleful Premonition

Induno painted this in 1862 and showed it at Brera the same year, the second year of the Kingdom of Italy. That was the summer Garibaldi raised volunteers in Sicily under the slogan Rome or death, crossed to the mainland and was shot in the foot and arrested by the Italian army at Aspromonte. Here the war reaches a room. A young woman sits on an unmade bed in a small apartment, looking at the portrait of the man who went. The nation comes in as prints and plaster, a bust of Garibaldi in the niche behind her, and pinned to the window shutter an engraving of red-shirted volunteers with the tricolour. On the wall there is one more print, of Hayez's picture of a couple kissing, which had been shown at Brera three years earlier and now hangs a few rooms from this one.