Eliseo Sala (1819-79) was a pupil of Luigi Sabatelli in Milan, and continued his studies in Venice and Rome. He is known mainly for his portraits, several of which hang in the Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Milan.

Ferdinand of Savoy, Duke of Genoa (1822-1855), was the second son of Carlo Alberto, King of Sardinia, and Maria Theresa, daughter of Ferdinand III, Grand Duke of Tuscany. In 1850 he married Elisabetta, second daughter of Johann I, King of Saxony. Ferdinand and his brother, the King of Sardinia, had visited Queen Victoria two years previously: ‘the Duke of Genoa, only brother of the King of Sardinia, who arrived last night … is distinguished & striking looking – tall, thin & with a serious, melancholy cast of countenance. He looks like the portraits of the Spanish Princes painted by Velazquez or Vandyk’ wrote Queen Victoria in June 1853. Queen Victoria drew two sketches of him which she pasted into her Journal with the comment: ‘These sketches give perhaps a better idea of his face, than the other, but it is difficult in such a mere scrawl to give the melancholy, serious & yet mild & kind expression, in his large blue eyes’.

In this portrait the Duke wears a dark blue Sardinian uniform with gold trim, and a blue riband over his right shoulder; his uniform is decorated with the collar, badge and star of the Annunziata. A miniature after this portrait was painted for Queen Victoria following the sitter's death from consumption in 1855 (RCIN 421565).