Eliseo Sala

With Chaucer Fine Arts, London, by 1986;

Private collection.

Angelo Inganni 1807–1880, exh. cat., Breschia 1998, p. 145, no. 73, reproduced p. 217–18.

Breschia, Palazzo Bonoris, Angelo Inganni 1807–1880, April – August 1998, no. 73.

Sala was born in Milan, and trained at the Brera Academy under Luigi Sabatelli. He was not only an accomplished artist of genre and historical subjects, but a gifted and coveted portraitist. The present work masterfully blends the two. Painted in 1846, the serenity of the scene of a young woman in her boudoir belies the political turmoil in which Italy found itself following the fall of Napoleonic rule, during which Italians had enjoyed excellent codes of law, a fair system of taxation, a better economic situation, more religious and intellectual toleration, and an awareness of a common nationality they had not known for centuries. Old physical, economic, and intellectual barriers had been thrown down, paving the way for what would become the Risorgimento.

Following Napoleon’s fall in 1815, however, opposing factions – from restored monarchs and the those advocating a confederation of Papal states, to the Republican Carbonari led by the likes of Garibaldi and Mazzini – vied for the future of a united Italy. The portrait of Napoleon in the present work is perhaps a reminder of the latter’s status not only as Emperor of France but as the self-styled King of Italy and instigator of Italian nationhood, reigning over the northern Italian Kingdom of Italy from 1805–14; while the caged birds are perhaps a symbol of the yearned freedom from current strife and uncertainty the Italians hoped to regain, and would eventually be granted in the form of a new Kingdom of Italy in 1861.