The painting depicts three elegant riders on horseback sporting red jackets and top hats.

The riders are showntaking part in a fox hunting meeting in the Roman countryside close to the ruins known as “Roma Vecchia” on the Appian Way. In the background, facing the majestic ruins of the Aqua Claudia and Aqua Alexandrina acqueducts, we see a team of foxhounds tended by grooms while other riders come on at a gallop. On the far left we can just make out part of the Roman skyline with the domes of Santa Maria Maggiore. The rider on the right is clearly identifiable as Don Livio Odescalchi on the basis of a comparison with other portraits of him. 

This form of hunting originated in England, where farmers and their dogs hunted foxes to cull the rising number of such beasts preying on their farm animals. It was Lord Chesterfield who introduced first fox hunting and then horse jumping to the Roman countryside.

This is an excerpt from an article by Paolo Campello della Spina published in the "Rivista di Cavalleria’" in 1898:

 “Thus it was that in 1844 a small number of English and Roman gentlemen in the households of Lord Chesterfield and Prince Don Livio Odescalchi privately organised the first fox hunts and shortly afterwards, with staff, horses and dogs expressly brought over from England, the Società Romana per la caccia alla volpe or Roman Fox Hunting Society was established on the initiative and under the chairmanship of Don Livio Odescalchi... The Society was dissolved in 1848 and was only re-established after Pope Pius IX’s return from Gaeta; its statute was drafted on 5 May 1852. Its meetings were attended by the city’s elegant society and Rome’s then very numerous foreign colony took part in most of the hunts…"