This painting was commissioned by Morosini Zeltner herself and sent to the annual exhibition of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in 1852. This noblewoman of Venetian origin was one of the protagonists of the Risorgimento in Milan, and it was indeed due to the uprising that she is shown in mourning: her son, Emilio Morosini, was one of the first to climb onto the barricades during the Five Days of Milan in 1848, and he joined the Lombard Bersaglieri in Piedmont, but in 1849 he died, aged just eighteen, from wounds received in battle. This was the first portrait of members of the Morosini and Negroni Prati families painted by Francesco Hayez.
