<1> Little known outside of Italy, Odoardo Borrani’s (1833-1905) The Seamstresses of the Red Shirts (1863, fig. 1) remains enigmatic due to its tightly controlled, closed composition that allows for little obvious engagement with the spectator. Indeed, the painting’s significance is indicated by its unusual contemporary value.(1) Priced at 700 lira—which was at least double the cost of other paintings exhibited in Turin’s major public art exhibition of 1863, held by members of Borrani’s Italian Realist circle known as the Macchiaioli—the domestic genre scene was clearly regarded as important.(2) The painting depicts a group of middle class women, whom the viewer is invited to observe the as they create the red shirts which became the emblem of the renegade revolutionary, Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882), whose band of volunteers made the unification of Northern and Southern Italy possible during the last years of the Risorgimento.(3) Despite the apparent simplicity of this domestic scene, Borrani’s painting makes use of a uniquely meticulous technique and complex compositional strategies meaning that while the painting poses many questions, few answers are revealed.
<2> Due to this enigmatic quality, the painting has attracted much previous scholarly attention in Italy, and a small body of scholarly literature written in English has paid close, if rather brief attention to it.(^) Both Albert Boime (264) and Roberta Olson (168) usefully suggest that due to the painting’s date it should be placed in the context of the patriotic response to Garibaldi’s disastrous attempt to capture Rome from French and Papal control in 1862. However, the painting’s contribution to the General’s rapidly growing cult has been comparatively overlooked in studies of Borrani, and warrants further scrutiny. Indeed, there has been a tendency within Anglophone scholarship concerned with nineteenth-century Italian painting to view Borrani’s image as mimetic: its acute realism allowing it to be all to easily harnessed an ‘underused primary source’ (Beales and Biagini 138). Yet such an approach to reading the work fails to address the complexities surrounding the process of representation it employs, particularly in terms of how it contributed to the growing adoration of Garibaldi that was facilitated by the contemporary intersection of popular patriotism and Catholicism. This article accordingly examines Borrani’s painting in relation to both ideas of reflexivity, and religious iconography and practice, in order to more fully consider the role of textile craft and its representation in the creation of contemporary masculinity as manifested through the figure of Garibaldi.
<3> Importantly, the recent Italian exhibition Borrani al di la della macchia (2012) placed new attention on lesser known images produced by Borrani. Highlighting his involvement with the Italian military it allowed for greater understanding of him as a painter of soldiers and battles as well as one of domestic scenes.(5) Yet this new focus should not encourage us to ignore the place of women in the construction of the particular form of masculinity that likened Garibaldi to a Christ-like suffering saint.(6) Responding to Katherine Mitchell and Helena Sanson’s edited volume of essays Women and Gender in Post Unification Italy (2013), this article will work to establish the importance of the visual in the slippages that were taking place between masculine and feminine realms at this time.(7) It will particularly draw on Mitchell’s discussion of ‘female solidarity’(Mitchell and Sanson 201) in relation to female writers and activists during the later part of the nineteenth century in Italy, extending this to consider the role of mutual aid societies in forging supportive connections between the male and female supporters of Garibaldi. As Beales and Biagini have shown, women were able to take advantage of the opportunity that the struggles of the Risorgimento presented to straddle the confines of the home and bring its associated activities such as needlework and care for the sick to the attention of the public (144).(8)
<4> A close examination of The Seamstresses of the Red Shirts that considers the painting in terms of the mutually supportive relationships between men and women that were precipitated by the Risorgimento, therefore allows for an enrichment of the important work relating to affective bonds within the imagined community of Italians during and after unification that has been carried out by Alberto Mario Banti and Lucy Riall.(9) However, neither have considered the contribution made by The Seamstresses of the Red Shirts to the swell of emotion that accelerated after Garibaldi’s liberation of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies from Spanish Bourbon control in 1860. In their recent re-evaluation of the Risorgimento, Riall and Patriarca suggest that a deeper understanding of the ‘emotional regime’ of the patriots of the Risorgimento would ‘benefit from a probing of its relationship with the dominant Catholic culture and its discourse on morals and sentiment’ (Riall and Patriarca 13). Therefore, this article also forms part of the emerging interest in Italian Studies in the emotions of which Banti and Riall’s meticulous study of the material evidence for the construction of Garibaldi’s cult plays an integral part.(10) Utilising frameworks for the study of patriotism founded on Benedict Anderson’s concept of the ‘imagined community’, The Seamstresses of the Red Shirts will be placed securely within the ‘sacrificial community’ - a term Banti has used to describe the specific conditions of the Risorgimento due to its obsession with loss, devotion and martyr cults, of which Garibaldi’s was a prime example(Sublime Madre Nostra 28).(11)
<5> On the other hand, this study departs from Banti’s notion of a Risorgimento ‘canon’ of literary and visual works that were pivotal to the shaping of national identity (Sublime Madre Nostra 111). Instead, by examining the relationship that existed between The Seamstresses of the Red Shirts and other forms of Garibaldian imagery, it aims to disrupt any rigid division between high and low culture as well as other socially constructed binaries such as secular and religious, and public and private, in a consideration of the way in which the image produced meaning. Specifically, reflexivity is identified as central to understanding how the painting constructs an identity for Garibaldi through his fragmented presence within the image. Manifesting in the form of a portrait and partially visible paper album containing a juxtaposition of his popular representations hanging on the wall of the room, Garibaldi’s presence is also suggested through the glimpses of red cloth belonging to the red shirt with which the national hero and the members of his volunteer army known as ‘The Thousand’ were uniquely associated.
<6> Wearing the red shirts that acted as a kind of unofficial uniform, approximately one thousand students, artisans, urban workers and young professionals set sail to Sicily from Genoa on 5 and 6 May 1860 with the intention of reclaiming the south of Italy from control of the Spanish Bourbons.(12) By 21 October, Garibaldi and his untrained soldiers had completed their objective and successfully conquered the whole of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies: the territory was annexed to Piedmont resulting in the unification of Italy. Such an astonishing and improbable victory precipitated what Beales and Biagini have justifiably referred to as ‘Garibaldi worship’ (144). Indeed, this cult was greatly intensified after his wounding in the foot during a vicious struggle in the southern town of Aspromonte in August 1862. Italian forces under the direction of King Vittorio Emmanuele II shot Garibaldi as he attempted to liberate Rome from French control without official sanction. As Lucy Riall explains ‘for many, Aspromonte added another element—namely, concern about his health and comfort—to their sense of personal intimacy with Garibaldi’ (Invention of a Hero 328).
<7> Despite the painting’s inward focus and sense of domestic claustrophobia, these references highlight the painting’s awareness of its own status as devotional image. Equally, these connections link it to other types of imagery and affective experiences that existed outside of the public exhibition space of the 1863 Turin promotrice - one of several regional art exhibitions that were supported by the academies attached to the major Italian cities in the middle of the nineteenth century.(13) Indeed, the self-conscious reflection upon the image’s own mechanisms facilitated its engagement with visual practices that operated beyond the limits of the academy, enabling Borrani’s painting to contribute to an already powerful and carefully constructed mythology that surrounded the leader of the most radical element of the Risorgimento.
<8> It was Borrani’s technique of working in oil, combined with a background of rigorous academic training in observational drawing, which enabled him to contribute to the creation of Garibaldi’s image as a secular saint during the most intense years of his adoration as saviour of the newly formed Italian nation. An uneasy sense of tension results as the licked finish of the perfectly rendered surface unifies the array of celebratory paraphernalia and domestic furnishing that frames the central act of constructing the red shirts. Yet the acute precision with which he presents the scene—a precision that mirrors the scrutiny that the women apply to their sewing—belies the slippage between academic and popular art, between fabric and paint, secular and devotional, all the while invoking the shared political activity of men and women that fuelled the worship of Garibaldi during the 1860s, which was itself reminiscent of contemporary religious practices, such as the donation of an ex-voto. Central to popular Catholic devotion, votive offerings in the form of a metal body part or narrative painting were created to give thanks to the saint believed to be responsible for saving the victim from death or disaster. While The Seamstresses of the Red Shirts is not a religious image of this type, it shares the logic of such ex-votos: an offering in the form of a painting that referred to both the scene of the disaster and the saviour to whom thanks was being given.(14) An economy of votive exchange belonging to devotional objects can therefore be seen to shape the reflexivity of this secular painting as it reflects upon the operational principles of the ex-voto through the cult of Garibaldi.
Domestic Patriotism and the Cult of Garibaldi: Borrani, Fabric and Sewing
<9> On 15 September 1861, the first national Italian exhibition opened in Florence in the city’s former railway station of Porto a Prato.(15) Celebrating the peninsula’s official declaration as a nation ruled by King Vittorio Emmanuelle II, an earlier work by Borrani was displayed that similarly demonstrated interest in both the world of female domestic textile production and the acknowledgement of its unequivocal relationship with the politics of Italian independence. The 26 April 1859 (1861) suggests the possible relationship between the immaculately dressed woman who serenely stitches together a tricolore against the backdrop of a Florentine palazzo, and the political activity of Matilde Gioli Bartolommei; the wife of Francesco Gioli who, as an artist and writer, was close to Borrani’s radical artistic circle of the Macchiaioli.(16) Given that her father Il Marchesse Ferdinando Bartolommei had also been heavily involved in the expulsion of the Austrian Grand Duke in the Florentine revolution of 1859, her proximity to the circle of the Macchiaoli suggests that she may have, perhaps, provided inspiration for their representation of such politically engaged upper and middle class women.(17) Although Gioli Bartolommei’s memoirs make no explicit reference to Borrani’s work, they do refer to the type of revolutionary activity that occupied women of her political orientation, namely, crafting textiles:
the main focus of attention was restricted to a remote, high up room, at the top of our tower, where my mother along with signora Rosa Braccini, the maid and us daughters, worked intensively to sew together two large flags.(18)
While highlighting the importance of sewing at a time of political upheaval, she also provides a description of events that took place during the build up to the action, drawing further attention to the direct involvement of women and sewing in the revolution:
I don’t know how to describe what the city was like in the late evening when we returned home in the carriage. It was a delirium of shouts and illuminations. On all our breasts fluttered the hundreds of rossettes that we had helped to sew, hidden away in our palace.(19)
<10> The relationship between women, sewing and the generation of civic emotion could not be made clearer in this account, which accordingly complicates the view presented by Lucia Re that the domestic scenes produced by the Macchiaioli were little more than ‘tranquil’ (Re 156) reproductions of a dominant ‘binary gender structure’ (172). By the same token, Re replicates Paulicelli’s focus on the ‘silence and mystery’ (245) of Borrani’s representation of domestic needlework within the middle class interior, divesting it of its emotional power and ability to generate national sentiment due to its attachment to the reasoned and comfortable environment of the bourgeouis home. Notably, the ability of needlework to stir patriotic feeling was seen elsewhere in the exhibition in the form of the display of a throne cover which had been made by the Scuola Magistrale Femminile di Firenze (Condemi 255). The prominence of this significant piece of applied art in such a prestigious exhibition was confirmation of the decorative arts’ important role in contemporary political expression. Placed in context of the establishment of new schools of instruction in needlework and embroidery, the exhibition recalled the times in Italy’s glorious past such as fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, in which the prestige of textile production was tantamount to indigenous Italian esteem.
<11> Indeed, the Scuola Magistrale Femminile di Firenze was part of a widening network of official and unofficial bodies that reflected both the political progress and sense of national pride that characterised the Risorgimento. Borrani too was typical of this new Florentine phenomena as he belonged to the milieu of Giuseppe Dolfi (1818-1869); the artisan and bakery owner whose workshop became the central hub of revolutionary activity in Florence after 1848 (Condemi 254). Dolfi was leader of the Fratellanza Artigiana d’Italia, founded in 1861 to improve the working conditions of artisans, which by promoting social justice and the values of democracy, became the most important workers’ association in Italy. Such was the importance of Dolfi that he was painted by a contemporary of Borrani—Nino Costa—in the tradition of the grand status portrait during the founding year of the organisation. In contrast with this more traditional presentation of heroic status, Borrani’s own portrait of a young soldier in military dress Milite della Guardia Nazionale Toscana (1860-6), private collection) of the same year displays concerns that he would later develop in The Seamstresses of the Red Shirts (Balloni and Villari 34). Due to his own experience of the military, Borrani would have had a deep understanding of the honour and responsibility of both wearing and depicting military dress. Part of his artistic training had involved working with the restorer Gaetano Bianchi who had enrolled in the the National Guard between 1860-1861, while Borrani himself had participated in the 1859 Second War of Independence as a volunteer in the 5th Regiment of the Artillery (Balloni and Villari 34). Unlike Nino Costa’s softer, psychologically penetrative depiction in his Portrait of Giuseppe Dolfi (undated), which seeks to elevate Dolfi through the established methods of tonal modelling and blended chiaroscuro, Borrani draws attention to the stark actuality of the military role of the soldier who is defined entirely by his uniform.(20) Here, the precise and lucid handling of paint constructs a perfectly smooth surface that echoes the glazed eyes of the solider; such is the solemnity of the depicted garments that were by now assuming national, as opposed to regional, significance, that he registers scant emotion.
<12> Borrani’s interest in the dialogue between military intervention in Italy’s quest for independence from France and Austria, and an artistic practice which focused on the meticulous representation of clothing and fabric, was entirely suited to expression in the 1863 promotrice held in Turin, which would serve as the capital of the newly declared nation until 1865. As regional exhibitions organised by the local academies of the principle cities of northern and central Italy, the promotrice aimed to promulgate the dominant schools and styles of the period. Massimo d’Azeglio, politician and prominent critical voice in Risorgimento Italy, astutely noted in his commentary on the growth of the promotrice that ‘by dint of manufacturing artists, art has had to become an industry’ (qtd. in Mostra del Centenario 26). Appealing to a burgeoning middle class keen to improve themselves, the exhibition also aimed to spread moral values rooted in Catholicism to all sectors of society. That the promotrice had become such a powerful force in shaping the artistic world was echoed in the words of the secretary of its organising body, who explained that the aim of the exhibition was inextricable from Christian benevolence as it sought to use art to educate all classes, claiming that it had to power to ‘reach out to every soul and educate every gaze’ (qtd. in Lambert 294). Thus, The Seamstresses of the Red Shirts was exhibited in a climate ripe for the reception of images dependent upon the instruction of visitors in the operations of viewing – a relationship predicated on the belief in the emotional efficacy of paintings.
Turin and Pavia: Centres of Garibaldian Devotion
<13> An image such as The Seamstresses of the Red Shirts would have found a particularly receptive audience in Piedmont, a capital with a strong attachment to Garibaldi and the radical politics of the Risorgimento. Turin was located in Piedmont, a region that had attracted a large number (20-30,000) of political exiles after the revolutions of 1848-9 (Riall 117). The radical presence of liberals and revolutionaries in the city was strong, and it became increasingly powerful as a cultural centre at precisely the same time that increasing fervour towards Garibaldi began to grow. By 1861, his prestige in the city was unparalleled, and he received letters of support and honours sent by the municipal government, as well as that of nearby Pavia.
<14> Smaller than Turin, Pavia was of considerable importance to the swelling of national sentiment surrounding Garibaldi. It gained particular prominence during the Risorgimento as it was home to Adelaide Cairoli (1806-1871) - an ardent supporter of the national project through the hosting of literary-political salons and the funding of patriotic journals.(21) That she lost three of her four sons as well as her husband in the struggles for unification did little to diminish her role as exemplary figure in the new wave of female engagement in political activity that had traditionally been assigned to men. Adelaide Cairoli was also a close friend of Laura Mantegazza (1813-1873), the nurse and supporter of Garibaldi who tended his wound after his injury at Aspromonte.(22)
<15> Described by Garibaldi in a letter to her son Emilio in 1873 as the ‘most precious of Italy’s gems’ (qtd. in Alla cara memoria 25), Laura Mantegazza was the subject of her own devoted following and the founder of Italy’s first working women’s society: the Società Operaia Femminile of which Garibaldi was president.(23) The society’s members were responsible for making the red shirts worn by his volunteers and this type of charitable mutual aid society was a prime example of the way in which the Risorgimento offered women the opportunity to participate in the public sphere, whilst also facilitating what Beales and Biagini have described as ‘continuity between traditional feminine roles and the new patriotism’ (135). As well as allowing for women’s integration their private lives and the home (Riall and Patriarca 157), volunteering and charitable work also placed women and men together in new, mutually beneficial ways.
<16> The triangular friendship that existed between the Mantegazza, Cairoli and Garibaldi was confirmed by the latter’s recorded stay with Cairoli on 13 April 1863; a relationship that highlights the utility of thinking about textile crafts and their representation in The Seamstresses of the Red Shirts directly in relation to this nexus of political engagement. In an account of her mother’s childhood memories the writer Erminia Ghiglione Giuletti described how she watched Cairoli and other women as they worked on the making of red shirts, recording ‘an active group of friends’ who were ‘working, engaged in discussion, surrounded by pieces of flame red fabric’ (Ghiglione Giuletti 124). Though perhaps not the women depicted by Borrani, given the painting’s display at the promotrice and the geographical and political position of Turin, the painting can nevertheless be connected to the wider political activity of Mantegazza and Cairoli. Such activity was certainly mediated by their loyalty to Garibaldi, although it would be wrong to assume—as have Olson (168) and Paulicelli (245)—that the women depicted by Borrani are necessarily relatives of Garibaldi’s volunteers. Friendship and the desire to contribute time and effort to a charitable and patriotic cause were just as powerful motivators as family ties.
The Moral Fibre of Borrani’s Reflexive Technique
<17> Significantly, Anne Hallamore Caesar cautions against separating the activities of men and women during the national struggles of the Risorgimento, arguing that such rigid division will only lead to obscuring women further from the history of the Ottocento (Sanson and Mitchell 226). Therefore, examining the gender relations that underpinned the swelling of Garibaldi’s unificatory effort in terms of reciprocity places his reliance on female resources in focus. On 11 April 1862, Garibaldi addressed the women of Italy in a letter sent from Turin. Despite aiming his words directly ‘to women’, his lines are significant for the way in which women are associated with the masculine ideal of heroism and the emotional power credited with their ability to elevate such heroism to its zenith, while their capacity for charitable love was identified as a virtue shared by the ‘Italian heroes’.(24) Equally, the letter argues that the role played by women in encouraging national feeling was absolutely indispensable to the construction of ‘the brotherhood of the people’.(25) Garibaldi was able to profit from his friendship with Adelaide Cairoli to swell support for his project.(26) Through her involvement with the women’s philanthropic movement, Cairoli mediated between the sexes, and, as a mother of sons, became the catalyst for the dynamic relationship between Garibaldi and the politically active women of the Risorgimento. Expressing her surprise at being recognised by him by name in a letter written to one of her sons, she wrote: ‘imagine the consternation my Luigino would have felt on reading the appeal by General Garibaldi to the women of Italy and coming across my humble name’ (Ghiglione Giuletti 125).
<18> A similar overlap of masculine and feminine worlds is visible in the moral discourse underlying the discussions of Borrani’s technique by his contemporaries: a technique so careful and precise that it mimics the clarity of focus that the women display towards their sewing in The Seamstresses. For example, the seated figure in strict profile controls the red fabric with her fingers, her gaze unwavering and her concentration as intense as the precision with which Borrani himself depicts the minute equipment placed on the table next to the pin cushion. Indeed, such careful attention was represented by a technique so sharp that it mirrored the subject matter of needles and pins. The parallel between painting technique and the apparatus of needlework was highlighted by Borrani’s friend Adriano Cecioni, who observed a geometric precision and ‘a mathematical structure’ in all that his colleague saw, adding that ‘in everything that he does, Borrani is precise’ (qtd. in Balloni and Villari 21, 30). Drawing a parallel between Borrani’s working methods and religious dedication, Cecioni observed that ‘he gave himself to art with all the faith and passion that in the past the faithful had displayed to God’ (qtd. in Balloni and Villari 21) The language used by Cecioni is also uncannily similar to that of Catholic devotion, with the described artistic method defined in explicitly religious terms.
<19> Thus Borrani not only captures the stillness and moral strength of the Trecento and Quattrocento paintings that his mentor Bianchi was restoring at this time, but he also reflects the Christian values of the private world of the upright and elegantly dressed seamstresses. These women do not make eye contact with the viewer, and are deliberately distanced by their position in relation to the stiff arm chair that acts as a barrier, containing them within the interior of the picture space. Cecioni’s description of Borrani’s technique allies him still further with the domestic sanctuary of the women, with Cecioni writing that Borrani’s ‘painting is not aggressive, it is modestly honest…his surface is extremely accurate and conscientious’: thus Borrani’s carefully placed objects can therefore be read as creating a the equivalent of a secular altar on the immaculately varnished sideboard (qtd. in Ballori and Villari 29).(27) Such emphasis on honesty, gentleness, modesty, precision and rigour results in a discourse underpinned by morality entirely suited to the subject matter and reflects the milieu of Garibaldi’s female patriots.(28)
Garibaldi as Secular Saint
<20> As established above, Borrani’s painting technique reflects upon the women’s working practice and implicates him in a shared concern with dedication to meticulous needlework. Beyond a knowledge of women’s craft production, the painting is also dependent on the viewers’ familiarity with the minutiae associated with Garibaldian devotion featured within the image, which Borrani himself must depict with communicable accuracy. After careful looking at the painting, it becomes apparent that the curtain rail in the upper register assumes the form of an arrow – an iconic sign that relates back to other forms of imagery from the period such as the lithograph Il Calvario di Garibaldi ad Aspromonte – Allegoria Satirica (1862 Civica Raccolta delle Stampa Bertarelli, Milan) in which Garibaldi is shown as wounded by arrows.(29) Pointing outwards beyond the frame towards a realm beyond the picture space, Borrani’s arrow is itself a playful reference to the reflexivity of an image that requires careful scrutiny to grasp its wider symbolic implications within the cult of Garibaldi. Equally, the status of The Seamstresses of the Red Shirts as an easel painting and a genre scene that hung on the walls of the promotrice is complicated by its representation of other forms of visual apparatus that contributed to Garibaldi’s reception as, to refer to Derek Beales’ term, ‘secular liberal saint’ (Beales 184).
<21> Michael Carroll’s definition of the popular Italian saint as a ‘wonder working saint’, with ‘the power to heal and to protect,’ helps to explain the force of Garibaldi’s appeal (Carroll 33). Garibaldi was conferred such exceptional power as a result of the apparently miraculous feats that he had accomplished by unifying The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies with Piedmont, an achievement deemed all the more spectacular because it relied upon an army of volunteers.(30) Garibaldi was also configured as a saint because he acted as the peninsula’s protector, anxious as he was, to save Italy from further oppression from foreign powers. Although not focusing on the painterly representation of the operations of Garibaldi’s cult, Lucy Riall has undertaken invaluable investigation into the material contributions to his beatification (Invention of a Hero 326), as well as the paraphernalia surrounding his ‘physical martyrdom’ (Martyr Cults 268). Objects such as the martyr-like relic of the blanket that covered him after his injury, and the locks of hair, pieces of clothing, cigars and pens that his followers collected from his home at Caprera (Riall Hero, Saint or Revolutionary 197) – all act as further symbolic and material evidence of the extent of his popular persona as secular saint.
<22> Yet, as Riall explains, the popular configuration of Garibaldi as secular saint was not ‘simply the result of nationalists scrounging from the religious vocabulary’ (Riall, Martyr Cults 287). Despite threats from nationalists who viewed its power and traditions as irreconcilable with the unificatory project, the Catholic Church remained ‘resilient’ (Martyr Cults 287) and occupied an integral role in the lives of the majority of Italians during the Risorgimento. In this context of combined Catholic and patriotic feeling, Borrani’s painting can be understood as a kind of domestic shrine due to its intense celebration of a martyr to the national cause. Indeed, the image is replete with the materials of saintly adoration, the most marked being the portrait of Garibaldi that hangs on the wall to the right.(31) Indeed, such portraits were an important vehicle through which Garibaldi fashioned his own image, reputation and presentation. For example, he sent his portrait to the women based at the headquarters of Laura Mantegazza’s Società Operaia Femminile on 14 May 1863, and so the presence of Garibaldi’s portrait within Borrani’s painting can therefore be usefully placed within the context of the dissemination and display of politically charged portraiture.(32) Furthermore, the presence of the portrait within Borrani’s painting also functions to highlight the intermediality of the image: being a painted image of a monochromatic print, its inclusion explicitly signals the painting’s engagement with other forms of imagery that existed beyond itself, specifically, those images and objects that reinforced Garibaldi’s pseudo-religious status.
<23> The portrait of Garibaldi is complemented to the left of the composition by what appears to be a print of a battle scene, alongside the framed page from an album or popular collage similar to the anonymous Collage Garibaldino produced in 1862 (mixed media on paper, Spadolini Foundation, Florence). Consisting of the layering and juxtaposition of what appear to be keepsake images, lucky talismans, news items and informal dedications, the collage formed part of a popular devotional material culture that was central to Garibaldi’s cult. In a similarly popular vein, the Album Artistico Garibaldi, published in Milan in 1860 and produced on rough paper with prints protected by tissue paper, consisted of updates which were published every 15 days.(33) Comprising anecdotes, accounts of Garibaldi’s adventures and conquests supported by historical notes, the unknown author intended the Album to function as an ‘auxiliary, a compliment to contemporary history depicting characters, cities, memorable places’ while celebrating the power of Garibaldi to generate feelings of love towards the family of Italy as it was gradually formed (Album Artistico Garbibaldi). Thus, the album was intended to function as a mediator between the nation’s faithful and the rapidly changing events of the struggle for independence. Conflating Garibaldi with familiar scenes, it sought to generate attachment through processes of memory and recollection. This emotional function is corroborated by contemporary accounts of art viewing from the 1860s, which suggest that the viewing of images was also fraught with emotion. For example, when Ida Baccini, a neighbour and friend of Borrani’s family, recalled the intense emotion of a youthful visit to an art gallery, she described feeling it as both “a celebration of the eyes and of the heart” (Baccini 36). Her powerful and embodied response to viewing art was exemplified by her response to the depiction of a tortured Saint Gerome receiving communion, which led her to swoon feverishly, placing kisses all over the dying body, examples that attest to the affective power held by images during this period (Baccini 38).
<24> The secular cult of Garibaldi also produced imagery that was designed to generate a powerful physical display of emotion in the viewer. The 1861 publication Storia Illustrata della Vita di Garibaldi contained many images of its titular subject’s volunteers wearing their red shirts, accompanied by the author’s hope that the reader would respond with tears: ‘I will be content if the tears falling on the earth of the tombs, will have produced a flower’(Inversini and Pagani).(34) Such hyperbolic imagery not only marks the intensity of the feeling that the expedition of ‘The Thousand’ was capable of producing, but also draws attention to the deployment of the tropes of Christian discourse that furnished Garibaldi’s cult. Recalling a range of Christian tropes ranging from the Tree of Life to the Holy Sepulchre, the emotive comparison between Garibaldi and Christ added a further level of complexity to the reception of Garibaldian imagery, particularly as the body of the Passion remained the absolute prototype for the afflicted male body. In a telling example following Garibaldi’s wounding at Aspromonte in 1862, Adelaide Cairoli referred to Laura Mantegazza as the nurse of ‘the second Christ’; a personification that would become fully developed in the popular imagery produced in response to his wounding (Ghiglione Giuletti 249). Similarly, the wounding was also discussed in this manner as part of a medical diary published in Milan in 1863 titled Storia Medica della Grave Ferita Toccata in Aspromonte dal Generale Giuseppe Garibaldi Il Giorno 29 Agosto. The text was vocal in its aggrandisement of the wounding, which was viewed as a national tragedy at the time, notably describing Garibaldi’s face as recalling ‘that of Christ—at least as it is represented in painting’ (Ripari 41).
<25> Though The Seamstresses of the Red Shirts does not make an explicit reference to the merging of Garibaldian and Christian iconography, it was nevertheless exhibited in the same room as religious painting produced by the Macchiaioli and other contemporary artists. The image’s placement alongside Artura Nanni’s The Seated Old Woman Reciting the Rosary (exh. 1863), Telemaco Signorni’s The Sacred Gate (exh. 1863), and Angelo Fabbrini’s A Visit to the Cemetry (exh. 1863), for example, indicates the type of themes relevant to Borrani’s Garibaldian domestic genre scene, while simultaneously demonstrating that the secular responses produced by the struggle for Italian independence accorded provocatively with the devotional function of traditional Christian subject matter. Thus, the viewing conditions of Borrani’s celebration of devotion to Garibaldi were more than conducive to his reception as Christ reincarnated.
<26> The anonymous lithograph Calandario per l’anno 1863 (1863, fig. 2), which appeared in the same year as the promotrice, depicted Garibaldi in the guise of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Visible in the centre of the image with his characteristic beard, he is clearly depicted as a saint surrounded by votive offerings of candles, hearts and bullets. Relating to other visual representations of hearts, the print plays on the cult of the Sacred Heart, a devotional practice that was organised around the image of a heart that symbolised the reciprocal love that existed between Jesus and the faithful.(35) Although the origins of the cult could be traced back to the seventeenth century, its popularity intensified during the mid nineteenth century, when Pope Pius IX made it a feast of the universal church in 1856.(36) By referencing images and objects created with the specific intention of generating an emotional response in the viewer, the presence of such printed material within the Borrani’s painting thus implicates both within a network of cultural and material production through which Garibaldi’s reputation was created, in which print, painting, and textile production alike were central.
Votive Imagery & the Cult of Garibaldi
<27> As the range of visual and material objects included in The Seamstresses of the Red Shirts suggest, Borrani was interested in a range of visual sources that existed beyond the confines of the academy and the promotrice. A number of other paintings by Borrani, such as his Milite della Guardia Nazionale Toscana (1860-61), also recall the stark clarity of popular devotional imagery through their use of an oval format, linear style, flattened space, and sense of detachment. The uncanny realism, claustrophobic composition and juxtaposition of psychological intensity with a lack of emotion shown in this painting is also displayed in The Seamstresses of the Red Shirts, with both images bearing many of the stylistic characteristics of the votive imagery which filled the walls of shrines and back rooms in Catholic churches up and down the Italian peninsula. Above all, the ex-voto had to be publically displayed in order to testify to the largesse and power of the saint in question. Thus the grand viewing space of the promotrice was ideally suited to the creation of conditions appropriate to the transposition of Garibaldi into the role of the divine. Although it was at the promotrice that the public came to discuss and purchase art, such was the overlap between secular and religious feeling here that Massimo d’Azeglio described these crowd-filled civic spaces as ‘truly pious’ (qtd. in Mostra del Centenario 26).
<28> Beyond this public display, an ex-voto was created as a means of thanking the divine for intervention in a potentially fatal disaster while demonstrating the reason for which thanks was given (Carroll 82). While The Seamstresses of the Red Shirts possesses some of the static, brittle qualities of ex-voto imagery, it is also based upon the principle of exchange that was central to a votive economy that hinged upon the giving and receiving of thanks. As David Freedberg explains in his book that explores the emotional reception of imagery including those surrounding the ex-voto, The Power of Images. Studies in the History and Theory of Response, ‘the central psychological factor underpinning the practice of making votive images was the desire to give thanks’ (Freedberg 137). The Pagine Garibaldi 1848-1866—a collection of anectodal and epistolatory responses to Garibaldi’s sufferings based on the memoirs of the director of the charitable organisation concerned with the care of Garibaldian veterans, the Commissione dei Soccorisi per I Garibaldini—that was dedicated to Laura Mantegazza, also shows how votive exchange was dependent on materiality.(37) For example, the collection recalls how Nicostrato Castellini, the director of the Commissione, had asked the wounded Garibaldi for a momento relating to the day of the wounding at Aspromonte, with the latter allegedly responding by donating the hat that he had been wearing on the day he was injured (Castellini 128).
<29> The painting’s relationship with votive imagery is therefore also established through its relation with this economy of donation, specifically through the exchange and preservation of body parts. The entire work resonates with references to the fragmented body: elements of its composition deliberately disjoint the women’s arms; indeed, it is only possible to view part of the hand of the woman on the left, while the hand belonging to the woman addressing the viewer is positioned in such a way as to appear isolated and separate from the rest of her body. Colour and tone are also used to separate the women’s hands from the rest of their bodies as the contrast between red and white emphasises the linear divisions between flesh and clothing. This kind of bodily fragmentation was also an important part of Garibaldi’s cult, with both Cairoli and Mantegazza expressing their dedication to Garibaldi through the equivalency drawn between bodily exchange and the intensity of their affection. ‘Oh how much joy to give him my two almost useless legs’, exclaimed Mantegazza, who was prepared to give up her limbs in order to save those of Garibaldi; while Cairoli was similarly prepared to offer her own legs and those of other women to save Garibaldi’s from amputation (Ghiglione Giuletti 249). Although the seamstresses fall short of offering their own limbs, this central principle of votive exchange is nevertheless present in Borrani’s painting, as the women donate their time, their focus, and their skill to celebrate and give thanks to their redeemer.
<30> As well as more generally indicating the presence of Garibaldi, the fragments of red cloth that are stitched solemnly together within the painting tie the scene more specifically and intimately to his wound, aligning the hero closely with the domestic sphere of women’s political engagement in the Risorgimento through a metonymical connection to his injured body. In a collection of lyric verses collated in the Strenna Feminile, published in 1861 in Turin by the Italian Women’s Philanthropic Association with the purpose of raising funds for its growth, a poem written by a Rosina Salvo personified Italy to create an image of the embodied nation afflicted by physical suffering and reflects the similar concerns with injury and sacrificial grief that characterised the popular iconography relating to Garibaldi of the same period.(38) Given that the president of the association, Anna Pallavicino Tivulzio, was closely associated with the president of the Associazione Democratica Torinese, the Strenna’s powers of political persuasion and engagement with the agenda of Garibaldi’s supporters should not be underestimated. Salvo’s verse is strongly emotive and conjures up the image of a corporeal Italy under extreme duress through the use of simple yet passionate language. She describes a severity of the nation’s pain that is so anguished that it is not only felt by the heart, but by every ‘fibre of a body that reverberated with extreme discomfort’ (Strenna Femminile). The word fibre is particularly critical here, as it identifies the construction of the body with the materiality of textiles – a shared vocabulary that drew attention to the vulnerability of a fragmented flesh, as well as the deconstructed quality of fabrics and wools. Both Mantegazza and Cairoli used the fabric of Garibaldi’s injury as a way of intensifying their bond with the figure: Mantegazza had used fabric to bind herself literally and symbolically to him as she tended the wound; while this fabric was in turn was bound by Cairoli to her own bed sheet (Redaelli and Teruzzi 104). Functioning as a contact relic of Garibaldi’s body, fabric transcended this pseudo-religious function to become a metonym for Garibaldi’s body through its proximity to the flesh against which it was placed.
<31> This emotionally driven, metonymical relationship between women, flesh, fabric and Garibaldi’s identity as suffering martyr has important implications for The Seamstsresses of the Red Shirts, which, as established above, is replete with his presence. Despite its linear clarity and clean, local colour, the painting is remarkably fragmented. The images on the left-hand wall are cropped, while the women’s limbs are bisected by the surrounding furniture; thus the viewing experience is never complete, only partial, just like the construction of the shirts themselves. Such reflexive fragmentation serves to exaggerate the importance of the textile making and needlework (itself a fragmentary practice that brings threads together to make a whole) and its piecemeal representation in the intensification of adoration for the wounded general.
<32> At the same time as indicating his presence through both synecdoche and metonymy, the brightly-coloured pieces of fabric had much in common with the structure of Garibaldi’s damaged foot, itself damaged and fragmented at Aspromonte, as detailed in the aforementioned medical diary. This account was accompanied by a complex diagram of the injury, which presented a detailed knowledge of the foot’s anatomical make-up, giving the viewer unparalleled access to Garibaldi’s body (Ripari 8-9). Like Borrani’s style of painting, the medical drawing is meticulous, presenting a complex depiction of the foot and the fragments of bullet that afflicted the wounded Garibaldi. This kind of medical representation would have found a keen audience in Borrani, who may or may not have seen the illustration himself, but who had served with the military ambulance of Modena during the particularly bloody Second War of Independence in 1859.
<33> While the visitor to the promotrice would certainly have needed working knowledge of both the structure of the red shirt and Garibaldi’s injured foot for this symbiotic relationship to work, the medical diary and contemporary discussion of textile production brought the two closer together through a shared vocabulary of material complexity. The medical diary was remarkably technical in its discussion and described a complex network of ‘bones, tendons, fluids and membranes’ (Ripari 8-9), echoing the knotty systems of woven textiles.(39) Likewise, an 1862 edition of the official journal of the Italian National Exhibition devoted considerable attention to the care of hemp and linen which were described in the same technical language as Garibaldi’s injured foot: ‘linen and hemp consist of crude central tubes of woody nature, surrounded by long fibres, the diverse parts of which are bonded by a type of glutinous adhesive resin’.(40) The duality of biological and textile-based terminology was also employed by Baccini in her account of her visit to the gallery where she described the return gaze of the dying Saint Gerome as ‘reaching the most intimate fibres of her soul’ (Baccini 142). Thus The Seamstresses of the Red Shirts pivots of the twin axel of a shared fibrous textile and medical discourse that is complicated further by the intersection of both with Catholic devotional practice.
Conclusion: Stitching Masculinity
<34> Although the painting’s display at promotrice of Turin, and its deliberate references to the saintly discourse that was produced by widespread visual and textual discussion of Garibaldi’s wound, created a climate for the viewing of The Seamstresses of the Red Shirts that was based on the generation of quasi-religious fervour, its complex iconography and compositional arrangements also referred back towards its own internal space, making yet further demands on the viewer’s visual literacy. While the arrow-shaped curtain rail points towards conditions external to the central drama, the fragments of red cloth that the women assiduously stitch together place Garibaldi at the painting’s core; themselves functioning as a synecdoche of his presence that worked in tandem with his portraitive presence within the image.
<35> The powerful symbolism of the red shirt as a reference to Garibaldi, functioning even in lieu of his physical presence, had been strongly expressed in a political demonstration that had taken place against the Austrians in the north easterly town of Gorizia in January 1863. The Calvachina Mascherata, held at the Teatro di Società, was filled with men and women who wore the clothing of Garibaldi’s original volunteers, dancing as they would sing ‘one, two, three, Garibaldi is our king.’(41) Due to the inflammatory presence of these red shirts, the event was later supressed. Those who were caught and arrested were subsequently tried by the Austrian authorities and although Gorizia was far from Turin on the opposite side of the peninsula, the group accused of subversive, insurrectionary activity shared a similar profile to that of Borrani and his circle, as it consisted of a doctor, a lawyer, an artisan and a silk worker. Consequently, this sequence of events is relevant for two reasons: highlighting both the role of textiles in the growth of Garibaldi’s cult, and the power of the red shirt to stand in for the ideological threat that Garibaldi and his followers—both male and female—posed to the authorities. This in turn reinforces the provocative nature of the red shirts in Borrani’s image, identifying them firmly as part of the visualisation of Garibaldi’s cult and its material generation.
<36> The Seamstresses of the Red Shirts was entangled in a series of complex triangular relationships that contributed to the intensification and crafting of the cult of Garibaldi in the 1860s. Firstly, Laura Mantegazza, Adelaide Cairoli and Garibaldi each contributed to the generation of emotional attachments to items of clothing and fabrics, ensuring that the latter’s radical patriotism was rooted in the material realm of textile production. Secondly, a tripartite union between viewer, image and referent was facilitated by the promotrice which enabled the three to work together to fashion an identity for Garibaldi as wonder-working saint and martyr at a time of both the acceleration of his cult and the growth of Turin as a cultural and political focus for radicalism. Finally, the painting’s precise technique, mirroring of the meticulous construction of the shirts, and its depiction of the visual mechanisms essential to the creation of the cult of Garibaldi, reflected upon the nature of such devotion as itself constructed between represented textile and representing paint.
<37> Borrani’s representation of the crafting of the General’s infamous red shirts therefore contributed to the public identity and cult of Garibaldi by generating a spiritual bond between the wounded general and his followers through their physical and visual attachment to the textile as a metaphor for his wound and the metonymical link to his heart and soul. Crucially, it was always the textile that facilitated the binding of Garibaldi’s body to those of his supporters, who used cloth and garments as a means of both giving thanks and strengthening an emotional connection modelled on the principle of the ex-voto. Although votive exchange could be highly symbolic, such symbolism retained its power through a constant referral back to the corporeality of the referent. In the case of the red shirt, this was the both the wound and the linen from which it was made. However, the troping of the body of Garibaldi as textile only became possible by hegemonic understanding of the visceral nature of the structure, production and symbolism associated with textiles in Italy in the 1860s. Although a visual representation of four women engaged in the practices of domestic needlecraft, the complex and multitudinous series of referents that Borrani’s image evokes shows how such craft practices were central to the construction of Italian masculinity in the Risorgimento through their central role in the creation of Garibaldi’s public identity, his secular cult, and even his body.