The Temple of Antoninus and Faustina

This temple still stands in the Roman Forum, having been transformed into a church in the early 17th Century by Orazio Torriani, who rebuilt the cella and constructed the lower half of the façade. The colonnade of the Roman structure was retained as the portico of the church. The highly baroque upper part of the façade, not visible in this drawing, was completed at the end of the century. A plate in Piranesi's Vedute di Rome (Hind 49), shows the building as it must have appeared in Robert's time.
The strange angle at which Robert chose to represent the Temple was used in order to hide the baroque part of the building, but as it was impossible to eliminate all such elements, Robert simply left out the pediment. As he would not have known what the building looked like without the Torriani façade, Robert drew it in very lightly, probably to give an idea of how it appeared before the baroque additions.