These two Italian scenes, carried to the same degree of near-completion, probably arose out of Turner's second visit to Rome, developing compositions of the kind found among the sketches on coarse canvas of, probably, 1828 (see Nos.475-80). The heavy impasto and rich colouring seem to parallel the treatment of the various interior scenes associated with Petworth and thought to date from the mid-1830s, but the dating is very tentative (MacColl, 1920, p.34, dated them both 1840 or later). Tivoli, a recurrent subject among Turner's Italian landscapes, ultimately derived from Wilson (see No.B36) is here made the setting for a Biblical subject in the same way as happened in ‘Christ and the Woman of Samaria' (No.486).