It was painted in 1860 from a famous photo of Garibaldi that Gustave Le Gray had taken. In that same year, the latter stopped in Palermo while he was travelling eastward with Alexandre Dumas following the news that the city had been conquered. It was the ‘Liberator’ in person to commission Le Gray the photograph which was bound to become a true patriotic icon. In this canvas, Lo Forte executed a type of ‘photogenic painting’ which had already made him famous in Palermo some time earlier.