King Victor Emmanuel II, Cavour, the Ministers and the Court Descending the Staircase of Palazzo Madama after the Opening of the Fifth Subalpine Parliament

In 1853, after a failed uprising in Milan, the Austrian authorities expelled people from the Swiss canton of Ticino living in Lombardy. Carlo Bossoli, born in Lugano and settled in Milan for years, was one of them, and he moved to Turin, the capital of the Kingdom of Sardinia. By the end of that year he was recording its political life. On 19 December 1853 King Victor Emmanuel II opened the fifth legislature of the Subalpine Parliament, which met under the only constitution in Italy that had survived the upheavals of 1848 and 1849. Bossoli shows the king, his ministers and the court coming down the great staircase of Palazzo Madama after the ceremony. Count Cavour, prime minister for just over a year, is the figure standing a little apart on the left. What Bossoli cared about as much as the people was the light, falling in long shafts through the tall windows onto the stucco of the staircase that the architect Filippo Juvarra built around 1720.