Schellinks visited Italy as part of a Grand Tour which he undertook between 1661 and 1665, partly financed by the family of his young charge, the thirteen-year-old Jacob Thierry the Younger (1648-1709), and partly funded by Laurens van der Hem (1621-1678), whose price was that Schellinks should make drawings of the places he visited which could be included in the vast atlas that van der Hem was compiling. The journey can be reconstructed not only through Schellinks's series of drawings, but also through the diary he kept on their travels, which was later written up in a fine copy now in the Royal Library in Copenhagen.

Having visited Malta and Sicily, Schellinks and his companion traveled north to Rome in 1664, following...