A major source for Ruskin's poem was The Restoration of the Works of Art to Italy: A Poem (1816) by Felicia Hemans, which commemorates the return of artworks that French Revolutionary forces had taken from Italy and installed in the Louvre. Lexical evidence in Ruskin's borrowings from Hemans's poem prove that he read the second, lengthier edition of the poem, published by John Murray in the same year, 1816, as the first edition (for details, see contextual glosses in the texts).

Napoleonʼs agents began confiscating artworks in Italy in 1797 for installation in the Palace of the Louvre, already declared a museum for public access to the French royal collection, and later to be renamed the Musée Napoléon. As Martin Rosenberg explains, Napoleon craved possession of acknowledged masterpieces of art, because their status awarded him the prestige and legitimacy of patron-rulers from Charlemagne to Louis XIV. Especially significant were the classical statues confiscated from the Vatican on terms conceded by the pope in the Treaty of Tolentino (1797). The spoils of classical sculpture not only enabled Napoleon to pattern his conquest on the plundering of Athens's treasures by the Roman general Sulla, as recounted by Plutarch; control over these works also enshrined his regime in the cultural significance that Enlightenment thinkers like Johann Winckelmann had conferred on such exemplary works as the Apollo Belvedere. Thus, Paris became the "new Rome" in both an imperial and cultural sense (Rosenberg, Raphael's Transfiguration and Napoleon's Cultural Politics, 180-85).

The classical sculptures were marched into the Louvre in a public triumphal procession on 27 July 1798. Carried immediately behind the Apollo Belvedere and Laocoon was the Transfiguration, the last painting completed by Raphael before his death. For the French Academy, Raphael's work represented the continuity of the classical tradition and authorization modern neoclassicism. His style seemed to condense the tradition from the ancients to Leonardo and Michelangelo, and re-present that heritage as a set of teachable rules, which for the Academy epitomized "a model of invention, design, and expression"--the methods of the "'exemplary history painter'" (Rosenberg, Raphael's Transfiguration and Napoleon's Cultural Politics, 186, 191-96).

After Napoleonʼs defeat, artworks began to be restored to their prewar origins in 1815–16. Hemans traces the homecomings, combining ekphrastic description of the works with celebration of the Italian cities that welcomed them home. The poem implicitly presents the works in the same order of importance and prestige that they signified for Napoleon, concentrating first on the classical statues—the Venus deʼ Medici, restored to Florence; one of the bronze horses from atop San Marco Cathedral, returned to Venice; the Apollo Belvedere, the Belvedere Torso, and the Laocoön, reinstated in the Vatican. Hemans concludes with the restoration of Italian Renaissance paintings, culminating in the return of Raphaelʼs Transfiguration to the Vatican (see Hemans, Selected Poems, ed. Wolfson, 31–33 nn. 15, 21, 29, 31, 34, 43). Ruskin, in his poem, follows the same order in mentioning “statues, richly wrought”, and “noble paintings”. For him, Hemansʼs ekphrastic poem must have provided an early introduction to these famous works of art.

Hanson has argued that W. G. Collingwood was misled by an assumption that Ruskin would have composed a topographical poem only about a place he had actually seen, and that therefore Ruskinʼs commission for “Saltzburg” must have been associated with his familyʼs visit to Salzburg during their Continental tour of 1835. This alleged timing of the commission would have been impossible, however, given that the poem must have been submitted for publication one year earlier than this journey, in order to be included in Friendshipʼs Offering . . . for MDCCCXXXV, which was released in the winter holiday season of 1834–35. Moreover, the annualʼs editor, Pringle, died in December 1834 (see Hanson, “Ruskin in the 1830s”, 122).

More significantly, Collingwoodʼs underlying assumption was faulty, as well, since Ruskinʼs poem preceded his aesthetic of “truth to nature” by a decade. The poem was composed in response, not to nature, but to the print culture of illustrated travel writing of the 1830s. Ruskin, like many other contributors to the literary annuals, had no personal experience of the place that his persona pretended to traverse; instead, his informaton about the place was drawn from printed sources, while his creative response was primarily ekphrastic, an engagement with the engraving of the foreign scene (Hanson, “Ruskin in the 1830s”, 143–47).

While Collingwood was certainly wrong about the late 1835 date of this commission, his speculation about the circumstances of the assignment bear inquiry. He assumes a casual happenstance, under pressure of a deadline: “It happened that Mr. Pringle had a plate of Salzburg which he wanted to print in order to make up the volume of Friendshipʼs Offering for the next Christmas” (Life and Work of John Ruskin, 1:52). It is credible that Pringleʼs regard for the Ruskin family and his genuine appreciation of Ruskinʼs abilities prompted him to solicit, for the same volume of Friendshipʼs Offering containing “Saltzburg”, Ruskinʼs “Fragments from a Metrical Journal”, a work extracted and revised from the “Account” of the Tour of 1833 (see Account of a Tour on the Continent: Publication—Friendshipʼs Offering). It seems an extraordinary undertaking, however, to have appointed a fifteen‐year‐old first‐time contributor to compose a text so prominent, as a poem to explain one of the eleven embellishments—for many readers, the main features of an annual. Collingwoodʼs assumption that the assignment of “Saltzburg” was a rush job is disproven by the probable April‐May 1834 date of the poemʼs draft, as well as by the many differences between the draft and publsihed version, which indicate ample time for revision. Also, Ruskinʼs neophyte status made him an unusual choice, Pringle having previously appointed mainly experienced hands to supply letterpress for plates.

Pringleʼs commissioning of Ruskin to compose an ekphrastic verse accompaniment to Purserʼs engraving was, therefore, thoughtfully planned and deliberate; and the appointment of so young a contributor for such an important role was rare, and possibly unprecedented under Pringleʼs editorship. The editing must have entailed considerable effort, for while the presence of John James Ruskinʼs hand in the draft of “Saltzburg” indicates some editorial involvement by Ruskinʼs father, Pringle would have had much to teach about writing for an audience beyond oneʼs family. All of this points to a considerable act of mentorship on Pringleʼs part, which he put forth on top of editing “Fragments from a Metrical Journal”—a selection from an existing project, which required editorial polish, but not an entirely new composition like “Saltzburg”, which occupied a prominent place in the volume. If any truth lies in Ruskinʼs comment on Pringleʼs mentorship, written decades later, the experience was more overwhelming than thrilling: “Had his grave authority been maintained over me, my literary bloom would probably have been early nipped” (Ruskin, Works, 34:97).

No correspondence detailing Pringleʼs editorial involvement in the composition “Saltzburg” has so far been found, but a suggestion of how he may have thought about his mentorship can be gleaned from an ekphrastic assignment that he gave himself four or five years earlier, while editing his second volume of Friendshipʼs Offering, the volume for 1830. It also featured an engraving after William Purser, apparently his first artwork for the annual, entitled Spoleto and engraved by Thomas Jeavons (1795–1867). Pringle reserved the task of writing the accompanying text for himself, although he had never visited the Continent, much less Spoleto, which was not well‐known to English travelers at the time. In 1819, Turner paused there in his first tour of Italy to sketch several views—especially the dramatic, ancient aqueduct, the Ponte dele Torri—which he did not put to use in finished work until years later. In the 1820s, Mariana Starke devoted only a brief paragraph to the town, in the course of describing the route from Rome to Florence. Only in the 1830s, the decade of the Friendshipʼs Offering piece, was more attention drawn to Spoleto for English viewers, when William Brockedon published an account of the picturesque scenes to be discovered in the approach to the town and surrounding countryside (Powell, Turner in the South, 34; Starke, Travels in Europe between the Years 1824 and 1828 [1828], 411; Brockedon, Travellerʼs Guide to Italy [1835], 144; Brockedon, Road‐Book from London to Naples, illus. Stanfield, Prout, and Brockedon [1835], 130). Purser himself probably lacked first‐hand experience of the scene, having based his drawing, according to the engravingʼs caption, on “a sketch by Captain [Robert] Melville Grindlay”, who had established connections with the publisher, Smith, Elder.

In the plate, Purser renders the scene on a plan similar to the composition that we would later use for Saltzburg. Spoleto is viewed from a distant, central vantage in the countryside above the town, with the town>ʼs major monuments picked out in the middle ground. In the foreground, figures in local costume orient the spectatorʼs gaze toward the prospect. Pringleʼs accompanying text, entitled “Spoleto”, makes no pretence of the author traveling farther than from his armchair. Consisting of a prose preface and a poem, the piece fills the page facing the engraving with an extract about the town from a travelogue, A Classical Tour through Italy (1813) by the Reverend John Chetwode Eustace (1761–1815). This preface drily summarizes Spoletoʼs ancient fame for repelling an invasion by Hannibalʼs army, and highlights the major monuments to be viewed in the town today.

Pringle swerves from this dry annotation, however, to introduce what “will probably be esteemed by most readers [as] more interesting than pages of further details from more ordinary tourists”—some observations on Spoleto from an unpublished travel journal lent by Samuel Rogers (1763–1855). Although much briefer and less informative than the extract from Eustaceʼs published account, Rogersʼs jottings are in keeping with the governing sentiments of the literary annuals—friendship and memory. “[B]y his kind indulgence”, Pringle explains, the “author of the ‘The Pleasures of Memory’” has personally shared his reminiscences of Spoleto. The quotation given in Pringleʼs preface, is a curtailed and revised version of a passage that would later be included in The Italian Journal of Samuel Rogers:

The ellipses appear in the quotation as given in Friendshipʼs Offering. Presumably, Pringle abridged the original passage (or perhaps Rogers did so, when presenting it to him), in order to focus attention on the closing poetic observation—an evocation of the scene by moonlight, with a meditation on personal relation with history—in contrast with Eustaceʼs factual travel guide. In the poem that follows these prose extracts, it is Rogers“s sentiment that frames the speakerʼs reflections. The poem opens with an ekphrastic reading of the plate; and then the speaker assumes the classic reclining pose of a figure contemplating the prospect, and seeks to reenact Rogers“s romantic engagement with the past:

While conventional, the meditation is framed in terms of the manner of viewing the prospect that Rogers has shared, as if Dorothy Wordsworth had composed a secondary “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye”; and the poem moves on from the prospect to dwell on indebtedness and friendship, themes that define the literary annual. “So rose the scene on Rogersʼ classic eye”, the final section begins, reverting to the prose preface and shared journal entry, and the section concludes with a declaration that the act of sharing testifies to one “Whom ʼtis a pride and grace to call my Friend”. Between these testimonials, Pringle negotiates his position in this friendship, which is unequal. While his speaker has adopted Rogers“s viewpoint, Pringleʼs speaker confessedly has not visited Spoleto; and viewing only its picture, this poet/speaker can produce only secondary prospect lyric, like secondary epic. Even if he did on some “reflective summerʼs day” stretch his person before the scene, Pringle modestly denies his the capacity to measure up to it, suggesting that he lacks Rogersʼs “classic eye”. For had Rogers made use of his journal entry, “[h]ad he to verse transferred it [the scene] from his mind”, the “touching image” would have been “enshrined” and “embalmed in words that could ne“er die”. whereas “Far other fate awaits this rustic lay, / Framed for the passing purpose of a day”. In “Spoleto”, Pringle transforms the workaday letterpress for a landscape print into an occasion for demonstrating the literary annualʼs purpose of cultivating memory and fellow‐feeling; however, he also maintains the neoclassical ordering of the arts, subordinating Friendshipʼs Offering and his own “rustic lay” to Rogersʼs “classic” verse (Friendshipʼs Offering; A Literary Album . . . for MDCCCXXX, 111).

In this deferential conception of the annualʼs place in literary and artistic culture, we perhaps can glimpse the Pringleʼs expectations when he arranged to usher his prodigy into the Rogersʼs august preence, at the poetʼs famed St. James Place residence—an event as extraordinary as awarding the youth so splendid a commission in Friendshipʼs Offering. No account of this episode is known to have survived, apart from Ruskinʼs later, ironic treatments of it, in “My First Editor” and Praeterita (Ruskin, Works, 34:96–97; 35:00–00). In “My First Editor”—written in memory, not of Pringle, but of his successor as editor of Friendshipʼs Offering, W. H. Harrison, Ruskin contrasts Pringleʼs “grave authority” with Harrisonʼs “ready praise” and “cheerful auspices”. Ruskin does not mention his two debut poems for Friendshipʼs Offering, characterizing Pringleʼs mentorship only in general terms as “doubtfully, but with benignant sympathy, admitt[ing] the dazzling hope that one day rhymes of mine might be seen in real print, on those amiable and shining pages”. The characterization of amiability and friendship is tied to the annual itself, while a hierarchical rigidity is associated with Pringle and his “cross‐examination” of Ruskin in Rogersʼs presence, resulting in a rebuke of the boy for “not attending” to the conversation between his elders, which Ruskin remembers only as carried on over his head (Works, 34:97, 96). The characterization is consistent with the unequal friendship between poets represented in Spoleto, and with Pringleʼs estimation of the literary annual as “amiable” but humble. Presumably, this would have been Pringleʼs expectation also for Ruskinʼs “Saltzburg”.