Our drawing depicts the fish market inside the Portico of Octavia in the Jewish Ghetto of Rome.

In the Middle Ages, the Portico of Octavia housed the most famous fish market in Rome (Forum piscium or ‘Pescheria Vecchia’ hence Sant'Angelo in ‘Pescheria’ nickname for the inside church).

A plaque from this period is still visible with the inscription in latin ‘CAPITA PISCIUM HOC MARMOREO SCHEMATE LONGITUDINE MAJORUM USQUE AD PRIMAS PINNAS INCLUSIVE CONSERVATORIBUS DANTO’ (the heads of the longest fish in this plaque, including fins, must be given to the Conservatori).  The sale of fish was favored by the proximity of the Tiber.

The wholesale sales of fish began at dawn and took place in the form of an auction, to set the day's price list. It was a real spectacle, frequented by commoners and nobles who went there in evening dress after attending parties in the palaces.

The fish were displayed on large marble tables carved from the remains of the Portico, owned by important families who earned money on the rent. Following restoration of the church in the second half of the 19th century, the market was moved to Via di San Teodoro.

Achille Vianelli (Porto Maurizio, 21 December 1803 - Benevento, 2 April 1894) was an Italian painter and engraver with French citizenship.

His father Giovan Battista, a native of Veneto, had married a Parisian woman and therefore changed his name to Vianelly and assumed French nationality. Achille kept his new surname and French nationality until after 1838.

From Porto Maurizio where they lived, the family moved to Otranto, where Achille spent his youth.

In 1819, we find him in Naples, studying painting.  In Naples, Achille became friends with Giacinto Gigante, with whom he studied landscape painting taken from life, and attended the school of Wolfgang Hüber - a German painter - for a few months.

He then became a pupil of Anton Sminck van Pitloo, in whose atelier the Posillipo School originated in 1820, in which Vianelli also participated together with other pupils, such as Giacinto Gigante, Alessandro Fergola and Gabriele Smargiassi.

In the 1830s, he gradually abandoned landscape painting in oils to devote himself to perspective views of towns, squares and church interiors, painted in watercolour technique and especially with sepia monochromes, of which he developed a fine technique. Many of his views were reproduced in etching or lithographed and published in volumes dedicated to the city of Naples.

His fame spread to France and Louis Philippe called him to give painting lessons to the king and he lived temporarily in France until 1846. 

He died in Benevento at the age of 91.