The painting was done in 1940 for a Biennale competition on a subject from Venetian history and was shown at the second Premio Bergamo exhibition. Sassu summarizes his still recent experience in painting scenes of battles and myth, giving the picture a tone of great chorality, in which we can trace, newly interpreted, the fundamental elements of his artistic formation, from Titian to the French Romantics. Critics of the time reprimanded him for his unconventional use of color, which was nonetheless in line with his own artistic choices, starting with the red men who here too constitute an important component of the scene.