Private collection, Milan

"Highly seductive is the equestrian portrait by Antonio Donghi, the astonished painter who knows how to give bodies a decisive, crisp prominence using pure colors, without intermediate clashes of light. The Duce, wrapped in his dark overcoat, rides against a backdrop of undulating, rolling countryside. Silence and vastness surround the Man alone, who fixes his gaze into the distance. The horse, well-modeled, is monumental, almost silvery. In the firm, frozen tones of the oil sketch and in the highly elaborate, almost calligraphic design of the cartoon, there is something Napoleonic and Neo-classical that places Donghi's work on a higher level, thoroughly detached from those of the other contestants."
— E. Zanzi, in Gazzetta del Popolo, February 13, 1937

A pencil study published in the Gazzetta del Popolo on February 13, 1937, shows Mussolini wearing a helmet and without his arm raised; the work on canvas was therefore modified by Donghi, who added the helmet and removed the raised arm.

Premio Sanremo di Pittura e Scultura, Concorso per un ritratto equestre del duce, Sanremo, 1938
Antonio Donghi. Sessanta dipinti dal 1922 al 1961, Palazzo Braschi, Rome, February 27 - April 21, 1985
Antonio Donghi. La magia del silenzio, Palazzo Merulana, Rome, February 9 - October 20, 2024