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GEROLAMO INDUNO (Milan 1827 - 1890) TWO STANDING FIGURES: A YOUNG WOMAN CARRYING A CUP AND AN OLD MAN
Black chalk, heightened with white, on light brown paper. 218 x 145 mm.
The young woman on the left of our drawing is very similar to the woman carrying a cup in the celebrated painting 'Il racconto del ferito', 1866, and the similarities are perhaps more evident in the large preparatory drawing for that painting. See F. Mazzocca, ‘Una raccolta di disegni di Gerolamo Induno, episodi di vita risorgimentale’, exhibition catalogue, Milan, 1984. Much probably also the drawing presented here is to be dated to the sixties'.

Gerolamo Induno studied at the Accademia di Brera in Milan under Sabatelli and Hayez. He was a versatile genre painter, who, like his older brother Domenico, was inspired by contemporary reality. Both were political activists, committed to a united Italy, and were implicated in the 1848 insurrections. Gerolamo also partecipated in the Crimean War (1854/55) and in 1859 fought in Garibaldi's army. From 1860 he devoted himself almost completely to paintings commemorating and celebrating episodes of 'Risorgimento', creating an iconography of the Italian struggle for independence.