Considered the founder of the landscape tradition in American art, Thomas Cole catalyzed the tendencies toward Romanticism in the United States with works like The Vesper Hymn. According to notes in his sketchbook, the painting showed a "view from Campi Flegrei," or the Phlegraean Fields, a volcanic area near Naples, Italy. To "a mind capable of feeling," Cole wrote, this scene of an ancient ruin would produce a "pleasing and poetic effect, a sentiment of tranquility and solitude." As if to demonstrate how such emotional exaltation could be achieved, he populates the landscape with religious figures—a procession of monks emerging from a monastery tower and a kneeling woman praying by a shrine—who engage in solemn observance.