In this group portrait, Malatesta depicts the family of Cavaliere Israele Guastalla, a member of the municipal council of Modena at the time of the proclamation of the Unification of Italy, who would later help to develop the Italian railway network. He is shown with his wife Clotilde Diena and children in an outdoor setting.
Today the name of his son Eugenio ‒ in this scene he could be the child in the foreground next to his mother and sister Nina‒ is carved on the commemorative plaque placed at the entrance to the Synagogue of Modena, in remembrance of the local Jewish citizens who were victims of the Shoah.
In the 1944, at the age of 78, Eugenio was captured in Formigine during the persecution of the Jews and deported to the Auschwitz extermination camp where he died.