During Rørbye’s Grand Tour from 1834–1837, he makes it to both Italy, Greece and Turkey, and on 26 August, he arrives in the Italian town of Subiaco together with the German engraver and landscape painter Georg Heinrich Busse (1810–1868). With only a few breaks, Rørbye stays in Subiaco until 24 October, and it is from this period that one of Rørbye’s most famous and well-known works “Den læsende Abate” (Young Clergyman Reading) (The Art Institute, Chicago, Inv. No. 2013.56) dates.

The day after Rørbye's arrival on 27 August, he visits the two monasteries Santa Scholastica and San Benedetto, and already here he contemplates how well the San Benedetto monastery is suited as a motif for a painting, and he makes a couple of drawings while there. The present drawing is very likely one of these drawings.

In September, Rørbye makes a very detailed study in oil from the crypt church, where he has stood a little more to the left of the stairs compared to the perspective in this drawing (see photo). That work sold at Bruun Rasmussen auction 911, 2022 no. 119, and acquired by Ribe Kunstmuseum for DKK 420,000.