They were works comparable to other painters who traveled Italy and mixed artistic classicism with research into color and local costumes.

[1] Vernet was considered a leader among these French painters, making him the juste milieu between the traditions of Romanticism and Neoclassicism.

[2] The painting depicts a battle along a road by the side of a cliff between a band of brigands surprised by a patrol of papal dragoons.

Two women, depicted in typical local costumes, despair and implore in front of a small religious chapel at the side of the road.

Further back on the right side of the painting, other brigands stand along the slope of the hill, some fleeing and pulling with them a feminine figure in a long blue dress—probably a passenger of the captured carriage.

The unlikely palm tree depicted behind the chapel, amid the wild vegetation, add a touch of exoticism to the painting.

[4] The fountain of water in the foreground recalls a classical sarcophagus, a common feature in the neoclassical themes of the French school in Rome at that time.

[7] The painting, which was reproduced several times, showed a dying bandit lying on an ox-driven cart receiving absolution by a monk kneeling by his side.

[9] Italian Brigands Surprised by Papal Troops was copied by Vernet's students and reproduced by Henry Dowe and David Lucas in two large aquatints.