The Italian Camp after the Battle of Magenta

In September 1859 the provisional government of Tuscany announced a competition for paintings of the battles just fought for Italian independence, Magenta among them. Fattori, 24 years old, sent in two sketches. One showed an assault. The other showed a cart of nursing sisters carrying a wounded man away from the field, and that was the one the commission chose.

The canvas he then painted is nearly three and a half metres wide and it is set after the fighting. The cart crosses the middle with a wounded Austrian soldier in it, the smoke of the battle is somewhere off in the distance, and the victorious officers on the bank at the right have their backs to us. He travelled up to Lombardy with his wife to get the ground right. It was shown unfinished in 1861 at the first national exhibition in Florence, and finished and signed the following year. It hangs today on the second floor of Palazzo Pitti, above the old grand-ducal apartments.