For the romantic traveller, the key associations of Verona were literary. It was where Dante Alighieri lived in exile from Florence, and it provided the setting of plays by William Shakespeare, most famously the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. Richard Parkes Bonington spent several days in the city in April 1826 as part of a trip to Venice and Florence, the only visit to Italy of his short life. Working in London two years later on the basis of sketches done on site, Bonington sought to capture the brilliant intensity of Italian light and colour and to enhance the picturesque nature of the view through the inclusion of a religious procession. This was probably the last painting Bonington completed before the onset of his final illness. It was in his studio at the time of his death.