De Boissieu left his native Lyon to study painting in Paris in 1761-4, and there he was befriended by the young duc de la Rochefoucauld. The duc took him on a tour of the major cities of Italy from 1764 to 1765. The present drawing, like the study of the Colosseum in the same technique in the Louvre, dates from this period, C. Legrand et al., Le Paysage en Europe, exhib. cat., Paris, Louvre, 1990, no. 128, illustrated