The Massacres of Mantua

This is a panel the size of a sheet of writing paper, about 18 by 30 centimetres, painted around 1859, with soldiers and civilians tangled together among weapons. Mantua was then one of the fortress towns north of the Po that Austria held on to, and its name carried a long memory of hangings and reprisals. What exactly is happening here is argued over. One reading, that it shows the killing of a single family, has been challenged, and the museum's own record leaves the subject open.

The back of the panel tells you more than the front. Written across it in a slanting hand is a dedication to the worthy Major Tabacchi, as a mark of esteem, signed Giovanni Costa. Costa was a Roman painter and a friend who pushed Fattori towards painting from life; Tabacchi was an officer who had fought with Garibaldi. Fattori seems to have given the little picture to Costa in Florence, and Costa passed it on to the major.