This watercolour is highly likely to belong to one of the series of views that Giuseppe Bagetti painted when, after having previously espoused the cause of Napoleon, he returned to Turin with the Restoration in 1815 and was appointed by Victor Emmanuel I to the post of "His Majesty's royal draughtsman and architect".

Thus the drawings which the artist produced at this stage in his career mark a change of course compared to his output during the Napoleonic campaigns, because while Bagetti studied his subjects at first hand on maps and tended, before sketching in the field, to gather as much information as he could from eye-witnesses so as to be able to produce a faithful image of the landscape, in this instance the Romantic spirit got the better of his purely descriptive rationalism.

It is significant that, in providing us with a dizzying view of the countryside so close in sensitivity to the spirit of Romanticism, he should have chosen also to build a slice of human life into his drawing. The two figures who, though leaning over the edge of the precipice, are clearly in no danger, appear dominated by the setting in which the prevailing mood is that of the abysmal, of the disturbing, of "threatening" natural elements such as the imposing rock formation and the ravine so reminiscent of the painting of Caspar David Friedrich.

Despite being monochrome, the watercolour is clear and detailed and the balances between the various parts of the view suggest a single whole embracing both the natural elements and the two human figures. For though the description is detailed, everything is in proportion and deliberately designed to allow the observer to grasp the entire scene at a single glance.