““It was an archetypal ruin portrait, a sub-genre that was terribly common during the fifteenth century. The top third of the picture-plane hosted a thick glade of botanically unrecognizable trees, while the midground included several isolated groups of ruins. The most elegant of these was a stately colonnade, supported by seven intact floreated columns topped with finials sculpted in the form of fierce-looking dragonflies. The artist had also included the significantly solitary arch, the remains of a large floor mosaic in the shape of a spiral, and several stacks of moss-covered ashlar stones. Behind the ruins, diminished in the distance, was the only complete structure in the picture; the domed-roof weaver's cottage in the thirteenth-century style was, no doubt, Loftus's attempt to appeal to the viewer's misplaced nostalgia.””
