Veduta del interno del primo Tempio a Pesto (Interior of the First Temple at Paestum)

Giovanni Volpato (born Bassano del Grappo 1735, died Rome 1803) was a noted antiquarian, excavator and manufacturer of decorative classical sculptures, but his principal fame and success came from his activities as an engraver of antiquities and archaeological sites for the tourist market in late eighteenth-century Italy. One of his many collaborators was the Swiss born painter Abraham-Louis-Rodolphe Ducros (1748–1810), who provided watercolour sketches for engravings and sometimes hand-coloured the resulting monochrome prints.

The site of the temple complex at Paestum, south of Naples, was known from at least the 16th century but was ‘rediscovered’ in the mid-18th century, during the pan-European fascination with the lost grandeur of ancient Rome and Greece, fuelled by the discoveries at Herculaneum and Pompeii. This view features the two-tiered colonnade of the temple once thought to have been constructed in around 450 BC in honour of Poseidon or his Roman equivalent Neptune. Now believed to have been built in honour of two gods, possibly Zeus and Hera, it is sometimes called the ‘Second Temple of Hera’. It is distinguished by its archaic Doric style and startling straight lines, achieved through a subtle curvature along the structure. It is this effect that Volpato and Ducros have striven to emphasise, with the plunging recession of the colonnades, theatrically lit by a setting sun.

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