The Expedition of the Thousand 

The Expedition of the Thousand took place in 1860, when a corps of volunteers set out to conquer the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, governed by the Bourbons. Garibaldi led 1.089 patriots, recognizable by the red shirts and gray trousers they wore. On May 5th they embarked in Quarto, near Genoa, on two steamships, renamed Il Piemonte and Il Lombardo, protagonists of the large canvas by Gerolamo Induno, who followed the departure of the Thousand as official painter, giving us an extremely accurate and singular account historical-documentary value.

On May 11th they landed in Marsala, on the 15th they defeated the Bourbon troops in Calatafimi and on the 29th, after three days of violent clashes, they achieved victory in Milazzo and conquered Palermo, taking control of the island. The last battle took place on October 1st in Volturno, where 21000 Garibaldini defeated 30000 Bourbon soldiers. The undertaking was a success: Neapolitan and Sicily were annexed to the Kingdom of Sardinia with a plebiscite. As an eternal memory of the valiant volunteers, Garibaldi commissioned the photographer Alessandro Pavia to create the Album of the Thousand, a collection of albumen prints in carte de visite format, with the faces of the young people who took part in the enterprise.

One year after the victorious campaign of the Thousand in southern Italy, Gerolamo Induno portrayed Garibaldi in an absorbed attitude, with his gaze turned towards a wide and open horizon at his feet, devoid of precise environmental references, were it not for the name of the place - the heights of Sant'Angelo, near Capua - traced on a rock. The canvas is characterized by a fast and fluid painting, which hastily sketches both the landscape and the two male figures in uniform, in contrast with the more precise description of the hero, which stands out in the foreground.