By Laura Bonelli

From 16 August 1808 the Napoleonic insignia instead of the civic ones begin to appear in the drappelloni and the coats of arms of the deputies of the party are replaced by their initials, in compliance with the decrees of Napoleon, while the image of the Assumption continues to camp in the upper part of the painted drape. This will be a constant until the end of the Empire. In 1830 appear for the first time in the banners the districts participating in the Palio through decorations, plumage and colored petals, in 1833 flags will be introduced and the following year the animals with heraldic characters, until 1845, when they disappear again to reappear sporadically throughout the nineteenth century. But in 1841 the regulation of the Palio had recognized the rank of the Contrade and this legitimacy was immediately celebrated with a career in which all seventeen participated and with a banner that represented them in full in crowned heraldic shields.
The stylistic changes that are found in this period are however so labile that they seem to be devoid of any artistic connotation but represent on the contrary a refined craft inspired by popular art. As the advent of the Lorraine had been witnessed by the inclusion of the Grand Ducal insignia, between 1814 and 1818, in the banner of the extraordinary Palio of 27 April 1860, during the presence of the Sovereigns of Italy, the place of honor usually occupied by the Virgin is left to the Savoy coat of arms, which was repeated only two more times in 1887 and 1904 on similar occasions. The emblems of the Contrade with the Savoy honors appear for the first time in the Palio of 16 August 1889. From that very year there began to be a particular attention from the civic administration and the prize becomes a work of contemporary art, performed by professionals and appropriate to external awards that begin to be thanks to the illustrious spectators who come from everywhere. In the last thirty years of the nineteenth century there is a refined attention to floral and architectural decorations and it is from the end of the nineteenth century that there is a real commission to a Sienese painter.
The first real artists of which we have memory come all from the Academy of Fine Arts, as Cesare Goretti, who signs the Palio of August 16, 1884 won by the Caterpillar, but is probably the author of those of the previous and subsequent decades and Temistocle Pecci, decorators with good academic bases and students of the Sienese painter Giorgio Bandini. But the turning point occurred when in 1894, the commissioning of both awards was given to the most important painter of the time, Arturo Viligiardi, who conceived the work as a painting, also for the form, greatly increasing the artistic qualities.