Thinking of Garibaldi

Giuseppe Garibaldi was the most charismatic military leader of the Italian Risorgimento and, by 1862 when Induno painted this work, a figure of international legend. The title — Thinking of Garibaldi — locates the subject not in the heroic sphere of military action but in the intimate domestic space of private thought and political feeling. A figure absorbed in thought about Garibaldi could be a woman whose husband or brother had followed him into battle, or any Italian citizen processing the complex emotions of a still-unfinished national project. Induno himself had fought under Garibaldi and knew from personal experience the magnetic hold the general exercised over his followers. By rendering this political allegiance as private reverie rather than public declaration, Induno captured the way the Risorgimento was experienced as much through domestic emotional investment as through public action. The work dates from the period of intense popular feeling about Garibaldi's campaigns.

A figure absorbed in private thought required Induno to render interiority through external signs: the direction of gaze (away from the viewer, toward some interior space), the relaxed or pensive body posture, and the quality of the face in contemplation. Oil on canvas allowed him the tonal subtlety to distinguish between the warmth of a present domestic interior and the distant quality of thought. Any Garibaldi-related object — a portrait, a newspaper, a red shirt — might anchor the reverie in specific political content.