The Hunter

A man sits with a long gun standing butt-down between his knees, a straw hat and his gear on the floor around him, in a poor room lit by a window and a low fire. The canvas is 44 by 59 centimetres, painted about 1854 and signed in cursive at the lower left. That was Milan under Austrian administration, five years after the risings of 1848 had been put down, and what sold there was exactly this: small interiors of ordinary households, bought for private drawing rooms. The patriotic subjects Induno is remembered for came later, after 1859. The composition is tightly ruled, which lets him give every one of the humble objects crowding the floor its own sharp description. At a small size the seated figure reads as a musician until you find the lock and trigger guard at his knee.