Arms Forward. Entry of the French Zouaves and the Tuscan Artillery in Rubiera

In May 1859 Signorini left Florence as a volunteer in the war against Austria, and the next year he went back over the same ground to take notes. This picture came out of that return. It shows French Zouaves and the Tuscan artillery coming into Rubiera, a small town on the old Roman road between Modena and Reggio Emilia, the army simply on the march rather than in battle. He painted it for Gustavo Uzielli, a Florentine collector, between late 1859 and the first weeks of 1860. A letter of 14 February 1860 finds him still at work on it. The canvas is only 29 centimetres high and 57 wide, a strip of road and sky. It stayed with the Uzielli family into the 1910s, passed to Florence's Museo del Risorgimento in 1926, and has hung here on deposit from the city since December 1976.