The composition of the pieces in Années de pelerinage, Deuxieme année can be linked to Liszt's journey to Italy in 1837-39. Italian art had a great influence on Liszt, and compositions in the volume are inspired by works of Raphael, Michelangelo, Petrarca, and Dante. The complete series was published by Schott in 1858. Later, in 1861, Liszt supplemented this with an appendix that contains the series of three pieces entitled Venezia e Napoli (this volume also gives the first version of these works).

As customary, there are two versions of the publication: a blue clothbound edition and a grey softcover edition. The preface, which gives the most important information on the contents and technical details, is identical in both versions, but only the former includes an English description of the sources and a critical commentary. Both versions include facsimiles of pages from Liszt's original autograph manuscript.

(Hungaroton HCD 31517)