The paintings depicting battles made in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries refer to the sixteenth-century subjects of Leonardo Da Vinci, Giulio Romano, Giorgio Vasari and Tintoretto, just to name a few of the most memorable.

The young Courtois around 1636 left war-ravaged Burgundy and moved to Milan, where until 1639 he enlisted in a company of soldiers in the service of Spain. These three years constitute for Jacques the basis of his iconographic repertoire, as testified by the historian Filippo Baldinucci (Florence, 1624 - 1696), who asks him personally why his works appear "so true and not fake". The painter replies that he paints what he personally witnessed. In Italy also known as Giacomo Cortese, Jacques moves to Rome in 1640, where he spends a good part of his life, but previously staying in Bologna and later in Venice. He also worked in Florence for Prince Mattias de 'Medici (Florence, 1613 - Siena, 1667), commander of the Medici army during the last phase of the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), who commissioned him some paintings, including the famous canvas depicting the Battle of Lützen now in Palazzo Pitti.

In the large canvas exhibited here, although considered by some to be of school and pertaining to the early works of Pandolfo Reschi (Chiarini, 1973), in addition to the earthy dismay in the faces of the knights, some of the characteristics of our the red scarves and feathers contrast with the blue ones, as a symbol of a systematic opposition between the Habsburgs and France (Lallemand-Buyssens, 2010), which characterized the fourth phase of the Thirty Years War in which the young Courtois had participated .