As court painter to Karl Theodor, Prince-elector of the Palatinate, Franz Kobell received the financial support to travel in Italy from 1778 to 1784 and, above all, to study the art of antiquity in Rome. There, under the influence of works by Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain, he developed into a painter of pure landscapes and perfected a type of idealised classical landscape that would become his trademark. These retrograde and hermetic works were mostly made in pen and ink, with watercolour only occasionally applied.