The painting depicts a glorious spring morning in Villa Borghese, the setting in this instance being the lawn in front of the Portico dei Leoni, or Portico of the Lions.

Two young women with a baby in a perambulator converse on the lawn before the Portico, while two children play on the rim of the basin of a fountain in which two white swans glide peacefully. In the distance we can make out a carriage discharging its priestly passengers.

Though undated, the painting may safely be assigned to the 1880s when we know that the people of Rome were granted (albeit limited) access to the park, which was still the Principi Borghese's private property at the time.

G. W. Palm (1810–90) The Portico dei Leoni in Villa Borghese,

oil on canvas, 41 x 59 cm, Private collection, Rome

Prince Camillo Borghese commissioned Luigi Canina to design the Portico dei Leoni in the 1820s in order to neaten and embellish an area in which a small grotto used for housing citrus plants in winter had been built into the wall supporting the Giardino del Lago, or Lake Garden, above.

Canina masked the entrance to the grotto with three arches resting on reused cipollino marble columns, and he built fragments of ancient Roman marble into the interior walls of the semi-circle.

Also, to even out the difference in height between the grotto and the garden with its fountain below, he built a set of four steps and adorned them with four marble lions in the Egyptian style, spouting water from their mouths.