Ashmolean The Elements of Drawing, John Ruskin’s teaching collection at Oxford

The drawing shows the roofs and pinnacles of the church of San Fermo Maggiore, in Verona - i.e. the parts built around 1313 - from the east. From left to right, it shows the side of the south transept facade, the back of the west front and the east front and its polygonal apse, and the campanile with its pointed steeple. The preceding drawing, Reference Series no. 114, is a similar view, taken from further to the south. The inscription dates the drawing to March 1869, during Bunney's only recorded trip to Verona in 1869, where he was joined by Ruskin who was there at intervals from May to August that year.

The drawing, along with all the other items numbered from 107 to 150 in the Reference Series, was never catalogued by Ruskin, appearing for the first time in Cook and Wedderburn's edition of the Drawing School catalogues as no. 115 in the Reference Series.

Whilst he wrote little about San Fermo, Ruskin clearly valued the church, describing it as 'wrought with the most exquisite proportion and precision of workmanship', and describing how 'all Venetian work' was 'coarse in comparison' to the arches of the outer arcade (Stones of Venice, vol. I, ch. xi, § 12 = IX.169 and vol. II, ch. vii, § 36 = X.302).