Of remarkably grand scale, high level of detail and architectural subject, this plaque depicting the Roman Forum relates to the later output of the Grand Ducal Workshops after the death of the last Medici Grand Duke, Gian Gastone (1671-1737). Most probably produced for a Grand Tourist, the panel depicts the Roman Forum from the typical vantage point of a traveller to Rome and the same spot where many celebrated paintings of the Forum were executed, like the view by Paolo Giovanni Panini (1692-1765) in the Walters Art Museum (37.2366). Interestingly, the lapidarist here has omitted the tower of the Basilica di Santa Francesca Romana, perhaps to exaggerate the height of the Roman ruins.

The plaque may be considered in relation to the work produced at the Galleria dei Lavori after designs by Giuseppe Zocchi (1711–1767). Zocchi supplied numerous designs to the Florentine workshop from the 1750s onwards, and his compositions played an important role in the development of the later eighteenth-century pietra dura landscape. Sketches of the Roman Forum by Zocchi exist and while the present plaque lacks the hyper-realism of the documented plaques made by the Grand Ducal Workshops for the Habsburgs, the quality and subject place it firmly in the Florentine manufacture of the mid-18th century.