Doyen's painting, exhibited at the Parisian Salon of 1759, where it obtained flattering and favorable appreciation, constitutes the first important purchase of Don Filippo di Borbone for the court of Parma and belongs to that solemn genre of history painting that had had great interpreters in the France of the eighteenth century. The work presents, according to the narration made by Tito Livio, the moment in which the plebeian Lucio Virginio decides to kill his daughter Virginia, to save her from dishonor, avoiding handing her over to the decemviro Appio Claudio, whose behavior is condemned for bullying. perpetrated against the plebs. The death of Virginia was, in fact, the cause of a popular uprising against the decemvirs. Without any uncertainty Doyen proposes a lively development of the scene, animated by a sort of dramatic classicism, eloquent in gestural and expressive dynamics and characterized by a calibrated and functional palette for the narration. Particularly effective is the contrast between the decemviro Appio Claudio completely wrapped in a reddish halo and the gray-haired and pensive old man behind him. The calibrated chromatic agreement between the white-pink that characterizes the clothes of the innocent dying heroine, contrasted with the blue-red of the outraged betrothed, accentuates the dramatic tension and the sense of extreme pathos of the narrative climax. An equally refined direction regulates the accurate architecture of the background, the antiquarian details of the furnishings and costumes according to a philological attention that will lead to a new triumph of the subjects of ancient history and will be worth to Doyen the title of fashionable painter. The artist, together with Nattier, Julien de Parme, Liotard, Pecheux and Carl Van Loo, artistically represents that moment in the political and economic life of the Duchy of Parma in which France, due to the marriage between Don Filippo di Borbone and Louise Elizabeth , daughter of Louis XV, will have a particular cultural influence on the small town of the Po Valley.