Our painting is an unpublished sketch maybe a preliminary study for a larger composition depicting the ruins of the Palatine from the “Terme di Caracalla” with the cupola of Saint Peter’s in the background.

This composition which must have been a beloved one by the artist who painted it several times, is studied in our sketch with atmosphere variations: a very unusual double rainbow which must have followed a thunderstorm is here caught in its immediate and impressive freshness, despite the artist’s vast production of clouds and skies of the Roman Campagna. The search for the variation of the light is here expressed through an extraordinary truthful resemblance to the atmospheric event.

The artist might have found a particularly beloved spot to paint this view depicting the ruins of the Imperial Palace on the Palatine with St. Peter’s in the background from the “Terme of Caracalla” ruins as testified by many other larger and more detailed compositions of his repertoire.