Giovanni Battista Piranesi

This view depicts the rear facade of Santa Maria Maggiore and the obelisk erected behind the church by Pope Sixtus V. It is similar to other drawings for Piranesi's etchings in the "Varie Vedute" series published in various editions in the 1740s, but there is no corresponding print in that series, and the only view of Santa Maria Maggiore is a bland depiction of the main facade by an unknown artist. Like other surviving drawings for the "Varie Vedute," it seems more concerned with framing the scene and establishing the chiaroscuro than with the details of the building (of which virtually none are indicated). When Piranesi made an etching of the scene for his "Vedute di Roma" scene in 1756/57, he chose a slightly different viewpoint with a less severe foreshortening of the church (one perhaps less dramatic but more conducive to describing the church's details in the larger scale of the Vedute) but he retained the dramatic lighting scheme of the sketch, with the shadows that fall across the building's masses in the morning sun
The fragmentary letter on the verso refers to the purchase of large sheets of paper ("carta papale") for Piranesi's Antichita Romane, published in 1756.