On October 29, 1793, at the beginning of the Terror, Hubert Robert was arrested and jailed by the Revolutionary authorities for having failed to renew his citizen's card.  He was held initially at the convent of Sainte-Pélagie and transferred, on the night of January 30-31, 1794, to the seminary of Saint-Lazare, the site of a former leper's house.  He was not released until after the fall of Robespierre in July of that year.  While imprisoned, he consoled himself by painting and drawing (fig. 1).  Materials on which to paint were scarce and he began to use the earthenware prison plates on which his food was served as his "canvases."  While some of these plates depict scenes of life within the prison, the majority are landscapes.  

The present painting depicts a group of figures in the Grotta di Posillipo in Naples; its dark and dramatic lighting recalls the moody prison scenes of Magnasco and Goya, as well as the famous Carceri etchings by Piranesi.  Robert spent a little over a decade in Italy, and during that time completed a drawing expedition to the southern city in 1760 with the Abbé de Saint-Non, whom he met in Rome.  Robert, a prolific artist, would return to his sketches of Italy throughout his career for inspiration in his paintings, though it is likely that the present work (as it was painted while he was imprisoned) came from the artist's memory.