The success of the painter Allan Ramsay as a portrait painter provided him with the means to pursue his growing antiquarian and archaeological interests. He began searching for the lost villa of the great Roman poet Horace during his second Italian visit and this became his main activity when he returned again in 1775-7. He planned to publish a treatise on the villa and asked another Scottish artist in Rome, the famous landscape painter Jacob More, to provide illustrations for it. This delightful evocation of the hills near Licenza was one of a number of drawings More produced for Ramsay’s project