Equestrian Portrait of Charles Albert, King of Sardinia

In 1834 Charles Albert had been King of Sardinia for three years, and he wanted to be seen as a soldier. The year before, his police had uncovered a conspiracy linked to Giuseppe Mazzini's republican movement, Young Italy, and a dozen men were executed. In February 1834 Mazzini's followers tried to invade Savoy and were scattered within days.

That same year Horace Vernet, the French painter of battles, finished this portrait, more than four metres tall. The Galleria Sabauda points out that he built it on a formula he had already used with success for several of Europe's leading monarchs, the ruler on horseback with soldiers around him.

The image also exists as a print. The Parma engraver Paolo Toschi made a large engraving after Vernet's design, showing the king on his horse.