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| Alessandro Vacca Death of Dante 1865 oil on canvas Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Genoa |
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| Domenico Induno Young Woman Marketing 1862 oil on canvas Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Genoa |
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| Luigi Sciallero The Good Samaritan 1854 oil on canvas Accademia Ligustica di Belle Arti, Genoa |
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| Michele de Napoli Death of Alcibiades 1839 oil on canvas Museo di Capodimonte, Naples |
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| Gabriele Castagnola Death of Alessandro de' Medici 1865 oil on canvas Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Genoa |
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| Francesco Hayez Meditazione Italia, 1848 1851 oil on canvas Galleria d'Arte Moderna Achille Forti, Verona |
"Clearly, given its conditions of ownership, viewing and material fragility, easel painting was an increasingly anachronistic medium in the age of mechanical reproduction and collective reception. Yet, it was precisely its anachronistic status that granted its venerated and incomparable standing in the nineteenth-century hierarchy of cultural production. Easel paintings possessed demonstrable 'aura' by virtue of being neither ubiquitous nor ephemeral. Traditional aesthetic values of iconic resemblance, uniqueness, originality, and genius bequeathed to painting its reverential appeal, above and beyond the primal feelings aroused by narratives of love, honor and virtue represented within the picture frame. As Carlo Sisi has written, the fine arts in Italy were considered a privileged vehicle of a 'never extinguished national dignity,' a repository of pride because of their historical primacy and international influence. . . . This prestigious cultural patrimony was not without its burdens, however. As Mazzini lamented in his tract on Modern Italian Painters published in 1841, 'three centuries of titans cast their shadows on all that is done today.' How could the works of Hayez [above and below], Mazzini's ideal of a civic painter, compete with the Sistine Chapel? The problem facing contemporary painters, as he saw it, was to equal this past without falling back upon it and to create a new art with civic purpose that expressed the spirit of the epoch."
– Emily Braun, from Easel Painting in the Age of Italian Unification, published in The Journal of Modern Italian Studies, March 2013
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| Francesco Hayez Destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem 1867 oil on canvas Gallerie dell' Accademia, Venice |
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| Francesco Hayez Samson and the Lion 1842 oil on canvas Palazzo Pitti, Florence |
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| Giovanni Boldini Portrait of painter Adolph Menzel 1895 oil on canvas Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin |
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| Giovanni Domenico Cherubini Portrait of painter Sofia Clerk Giordano 1801 oil on canvas Accademia di San Luca, Rome |
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| Giuseppe Bezzuoli Adonis ca, 1817-18 oil on canvas private collection |
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| Federico Peschiera Rinaldo in the Garden of Armida (scene from Gerusalemme Liberata by Torquato Tasso) 1852 oil on canvas Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Genoa |
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| Federico Peschiera Rinaldo in the Garden of Armida (detail) (scene from Gerusalemme Liberata by Torquato Tasso) 1852 oil on canvas Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Genoa |
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| Filippo Leonardi Raphael Sanzio teaching Perspective to Fra Bartolomeo 1863 oil on canvas Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Genoa |
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| Odoardo Borrani At the Accademia Gallery, Florence ca. 1875 oil on canvas Galleria dell' Accademia di Firenze |