Travellers in the ruins of a vaulted rotonda

The present work is very close in composition to two watercolours by Charles-Louis Clerisseau (1721-1820), which show the same ruined vault with figures in different positions (A Ruined Coffered Dome, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; and Fantasia architettonica dall' antico, for which see Intorno a Piranesi e David, exhib. cat., P. & F. Vangelli, Rome, 2005, p. 50). A drawing by Charles-Joseph Natoire (1700-1777) also seems to show the same building (Ruines: compositions d'architecture, in the Alger Collection, Faculté de Medicine de Montpellier). Piranesi did have connections with the French Academy in Rome, with whom he worked in the early 1740s on a series of vedute of the city and its ruins.