This work is one of a projected set of four monumental landscapes representing the times of day that Gericault painted in his Paris studio. (Only three were completed.) Conceived as a decorative ensemble, the paintings fuse souvenirs of ruins in the Italian countryside, which the artist had visited in 1816 and 1817, with the grand manner exemplified by past masters Nicolas Poussin and Joseph Vernet. The stormy sky and turbulent mood of this picture exemplify notions of the Sublime and the aesthetic of the emerging Romantic movement.