It was visited by both Jacob Philipp Hackert and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, with the latter writing in his letters "The current view of the Temple of Juno is as gritty as one could wish for".

[4] he wrote of Ernst Ferdinand Oehme that he might have got further in art had he "not travelled to Rome" and that he had "greatly improved" since returning from thence, getting clear of the fashionable influence of Joseph Anton Koch who was "no longer a student of nature".

[5] He also wrote of a number of similar artists as being "no longer satisfied with our German sun, moon and stars, our rocks, trees and herbs, seas and rivers"[6] His reason for rejecting a trip to Italy is unknown, possibly for fear of betraying German brotherhood, though it was not from lack of funds, since he turned down invitations from his painter friend Frederik Christian Lund in 1816: Thank you for your friendly invitation to Rome, but I must admit my mind never went there.

[8] Ironically, Friedrich's friend Johan Christian Clausen Dahl took him to Naples virtually by including a figure of him in his Eruption of Vesuvius, identifiable from a labelled preparatory drawing.

Hegi produced the aquatints for Voyage pittoresque en Sicile for the Paris book-dealer Jean Frédérik Ostervald between 1822 and 1826.,[15] though the watercolours on which they were based dated back to 1780.

The rubble to the left was reworked as Elbe sandstone and the trees and shrubs turned into central European examples from Friedrich's homeland, the background mountains were altered, both showing the painter's lack of interest in the ruins' original Mediterranean setting.

Altogether his alterations also demonstrate his obedience to Christian Cay Lorenz Hirschfeld's 'Wirkungsästhetik', particularly as stated in the chapter 'Of Temples, Grottoes, Hermitages, Chapels and Ruins' in Theorie der Gartenkunst: What sensations of melancholy and sadness did not sometimes seize the traveling admirers of antiquity when, in the formerly beautifully built lands of Greece, they found sleeping places for shepherds and wild animals' caves amidst the remains of temples!