Throughout his career as a painter, Edward Cooke travelled extensively in Europe, visiting France, Holland, Italy, Spain, North Africa and Scandinavia. Paintings and drawings resulted from all his travels, but it is evident that the places that provided the strongest fascination for him besides the southern coastline of England were the beaches and estuaries of Holland and the topography of Venice and Italy.

This pencil drawing, made on the spot in the Piazza della Bocca della Verità in Rome and annotated with details of buildings and places, was made during his first Mediterranean tour of 1845–46, when he travelled through the south of France, to Florence, Rome, Salerno and Capri. Rather than recording the great classical monument of the Temple of Vesta in detail, Cooke evokes the crumbling, almost neglected air of the 19th-century city, contrasting the urban buildings against the rustic oxen with their sweeping horns and their country carts.