The rider who got entangled with one foot on a stirrup

This dramatic subject — a rider whose foot has caught in a stirrup, dragging him in danger from his own horse — depicts one of the most feared accidents in cavalry service. Painted around 1880 and held in Florence's Galleria d'Arte Moderna, the work demonstrates Fattori's ability to capture the sudden, violent contingency of equestrian life. His long study of horses and cavalry gave him both the technical authority to depict the entanglement convincingly and the emotional intelligence to portray the specific terror of an accident in which horse and rider are bound together in mutual peril. The subject combines his two great preoccupations — the military world and the horse — in a moment of crisis rather than order.

The diagonal energy of the composition mirrors the physical emergency of the subject — no stable verticals, everything pulling and twisting. Fattori's handling of the horse in motion is at its most accomplished here, with the animal's momentum conveyed through dynamic, slanted brushwork. The palette is warm and earthy, the setting abbreviated to maintain focus on the action.