This painting shows one of the most celebrated views of Rome, looking over the city from the Janiculum Hill in Trastevere. The landscape to the north of the city, on the left, is dominated by the Vatican, with the dome of St. Peter’s, and the Roman countryside of the Campagna beyond. On the horizon, to the right, is Mount Soracte.This is one of Wilson’s most ambitious early Italian landscape paintings. It was commissioned by the British aristocrat William Legge, second Earl of Dartmouth, who was one of Wilson’s key patrons in Italy.