The painting depicts Cotopaxi, an active volcano that is also the second highest peak in modern-day Ecuador, spewing smoke and ash across a colorful sunrise.

[2] Cotopaxi was met with great acclaim, seen by some as a "parable" of the Civil War, then raging in the American South, with its casting of light against darkness in a vast tropical landscape.

[8] Church was a member of the Hudson River School, which stressed the need to experience the natural world directly in order to depict the same subjects on canvas.

[9][10] Cotopaxi was commissioned by James Lenox, an American philanthropist who notably owned the first paintings by English artist J. M. W. Turner to reach America; these included Staffa, Fingal's Cave (1832) & Fort Vimieux (1831).

Both Church and Humboldt over-dramatized the slopes of Cotopaxi's crater and sides, using artistic license to idealize the vantage point used by the audience to view the dynamic landscape.