Die Mamellen bei Civitella,

In the early nineteenth century the Sabine mountains east of Rome and the nearby villages of Olevano and Civitella became an area specially favoured by German landscape painters. Fries’s canvas depicts the Ruffi mountains, known as the ‘le mammelle’ (the udders), which Schack described as ‘those two rocky rises between Civitella and Subiaco well known to all painters’.