He began his artistic career with paintings in a distinctly Neoclassical style, but very quickly he was won over to Romanticism, as championed then in Milan by Hayez and Tranquillo Cremona.
Among his main works are: La Ragione di Stato (Reasons of State); The Divorce of Napoleon I; Tintoretto paints his dead daughter's portrait; L'inventario (The Inventory); La lezione di geografia (Geography Lesson); San Luigi, and the large canvas of Il passaggio del Ticino (1859) commissioned by Antonio Traversi of Verona.
[2] Other painters who joined Garibaldi were Giuseppe Sogni, Gerolamo Induno, Paolo Calvi, and Sebastiano de Albertis.
Later in his life, Pagliano became a teacher at the Brera Academy and counted among his pupils the painters Pompeo Mariani, Spartaco Vela, and Uberto Dell’Orto.
During his lifetime his paintings had failed to make a great stir; however, his reputation increased when, shortly after his death, an exhibition in his honour was mounted in Milan.