Edouard riou, who was visiting italy to cover weddings, also painted scenes from various regions of italy. This is one of them. Mail from italy. Milan, february 10, 1859. Yesterday evening i crossed the border line which separates lombardy-venetian from the sardinian states. The sun was setting at that moment behind our wagons which, traveling the railway from turin to milan, crossed the international bridge at a rapid pace. To our left was the alps, whose snowy crest was colored pink. In front of us, as well as behind us, stretched a vast plain where the small town of tichino, which we had just left, and that of magenta which grouped its thatched roofs in front of us were lost in the greenery; nothing, except a few clumps of trees, broke the uniformity of this monotonous expanse which the sun flooded and colored with its last rays. Closer to us, the austrian customs flags, raised at the eastern end of the bridge, seem to observe, like two sentinels, the similar flags built at the opposite end for the piedmontese customs. The ticino, whose waters are still very low, moved silently with its lazy waters between the grassy banks and the lands covered with reeds, large rushes and gladioli which obstruct the bed of the river. You ask me for information on the sketch of the ticino bridge that i drew for le monde illustré. Here is what i can give you. It's a leaflet that i tear out of my travel notebook. I cannot tell you the feeling of sadness with which one feels, with which at least i felt my heart filled in front of this calm, uniform, mute, almost uncultivated and deserted nature. And yet it was this italy so famous that the middle ages enlivened it with its industrious activity, just as antiquity had filled it with its warlike life; the land of scipio, caesar and medici; this land which, leaving others to admire the brilliance of its power, i had only wanted to glimpse through the radiance of its arts. I involuntarily remembered those beautiful verses in which lord buon traced with
so much charm and poetry the funereal aspect and at the same time fresh and serene of ottoman greece in its
giaour. It is true that i found myself at that moment under the impression of the most profound contrast. I left the towns of piedmont still very moved by their concerns and their festivals. It was from the midst of this agitation, of this eagerness, of this noisy and joyful life, that i suddenly found myself transported into the presence of this nature calm like monotonous solitude, like the desert. And then the plain that i had just crossed was the novara plain. Whatever the cause of my personal impression, the site seemed to me to have an importance, a
character and color that make it worthy of finding a place in your journal. While waiting for larger shipments, i am placing it in the same envelope as this letter. Accept, etc. Ed. Riou. Date: 5 March 1859.
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