This is one of a group of drawings which represent the countryside around Nuremberg and were probably made soon after Dürer returned from his first visit to Italy. The small building has been identified from an atlas published by Paul Pfinzinger about 1595 (Staatsarchiv, Nuremberg as the Weyerhaüsslein ('small pond house') at St Johannis, which in Dürer's day was just outside the city walls, but now is a suburb of Nuremberg.