Towards the end of 1825, at the age of twenty-nine, Camille Corot left Paris for Italy. He arrived in Rome in November or at the very beginning of December, and soon began producing drawings and oil sketches of views in the city and the surrounding countryside. He remained in Italy for three years, producing around 220 drawings and 150 landscape paintings and oil sketches. Many of the drawings are precisely dated and with the views identified, and from these it is possible to gain a clear idea of his travels in Italy. The works produced during these early years in Italy remained personal and private exercises; indeed, none of Corot’s Italian paintings or drawings seem to have left his studio during his lifetime, and only one landscape painting from this period is known to have been exhibited by him at the Salon.

This fine pencil study, dated December 1825, is one of the earliest of Corot’s Roman drawings. The drawing depicts a view of the Forum with the apse of the Temple of Venus and Roma at the left, the church of San Francesco Romana and its bell tower to the left of centre, the tower of the Palazzo Senatorio in the distance and part of the Basilica of Constantine at the right. Undoubtedly one of the first drawings produced by Corot in Italy, the present sheet is in fact one of only two drawings dated 1825.