On 26 July 1843, Lear and his friend Charles Knight set forth on horseback on a two-week journey from Rome to Avezzano. When the friends parted, Lear spent the next few months retracing their journey on foot, stopping along the way to draw. The date for this work, 2 September 1843, places it on the artist's return trip. Lear used the drawing as the basis for a lithograph in his Illustrated Excursions in Italy (pl. 7). In his book he described Celano as "once an important fortress-town . . . [it] is now remarkable only for the extreme picturesqueness of its situation: it stands below a wondrous bare precipice on a hill overlooking the whole of the Lake of Fucino, though at a considerable distance from its edge; the space between the town and the water being filled with meadows and vineyards, and watered by the clearest of streams."