The present painting is a view by night of the cloister of the monastery of Certosa di S.Giacomo on the Punta Tragara. The two free-standing rocks in the sea on the horizon of the painting are known as the Faraglioni and are located to the south-west of Capri. Catel probably visited the monastery on his first trip to Naples in 1813. Built in the years 1371–74, the monastery would have been empty of monks at the time of his visit following secularisation in 1808.

A report in the Berliner Kunstblatt in 1828 on an exhibition of German artists in the Via Margutta in Rome in the previous year gives a very precise description of what appears to be a very similar composition by Catel.

‘Two works by Catel – so extremely prolific and skilful – were exhibited. The first depicts a Capuchin [sic] monastery on the island of Capri. A monk deep in melancholy stares into the moonlight. The character of the night, the silence, the monastic solitude and the loneliness of the island are exquisitely conveyed. These are no empty light-and-shadow effects. One imagines feeling the pleasing ambience of the moonlight, one joins the monk looking out to sea, one tries to guess what he is thinking and feeling, one sees the sparkling light of the waters and one imagines listening to the murmuring of the sea while in a sepulchral passageway another monk lights his way to his slumbers through the door of his cell.’

The present whereabouts of this particular painting are unknown but a small, probably preparatory watercolour is in the collection of the Pio Istituto Capel in Rome. Two versions of the composition are known, though they differ in detail. The present painting, which is in the same format, can now be safely added to these two known versions. Infra-red examination of the present painting reveals a preliminary sketch in black chalk under the architectural elements whereas the figures are painted directly on the canvas. This could well be the painting that Catel exhibited at the Berliner Kunstausstellung in 1830.

A similar small painting on copper by Catel is also known, although the architecture of the cloister differs. The two arches are no longer placed side by side but at right angles to one another. Catel’s repeated treatment of the motif attests to its popularity. The same subject appears in the work of the Austrian painter Peter Fendi (1796-1841) and Catel himself may well have been influenced in this choice of romantic motif – monks and melancholy – by the French painter François Marius Granet (1775-1849). Catel had struck up a friendship with Granet in 1811-1812.