It is hard now to imagine how exciting to young artists the prospect of travel must have seemed after the upheaval of the Napoleonic Wars. The British had been effectively blockaded on their island for decades and denied access to the cities of Europe, with their great art collections, and the sights of the Classical world. Eastlake left for Rome in September 1816, at the age of 23. The geology and topography of this fresh oil sketch is typical of the area around Groppo del Vescovo, in the Apennines between La Spezia and Parma, a landscape through which he probably travelled. There is a village just sketched in under the mountain in the far middle ground, and a goatherd on the white ridge in the foreground.