To observe the different approaches of narrating and depicting the events and sites of the 1849 conflict, Lecchi’s photographic account should be contextualized in the iconographic production of the time.

Several artists who had participated in or witnessed the episodes, or who wanted to fix the images of certain protagonists created drawings, watercolors, engravings, paintings, and sketches. To these should be added the visual accounts that were submitted to foreign periodicals, often published to accompany chronicles of the events.

The similarity is only partially connected to the object represented. What differs is the type of attention paid by photographers compared to other visual artists, who had more time to organize and develop images in post-production, even over extended periods of time, sometimes using sketches drafted on site, or taking their inspiration from the works of other artists.