The picture portrays a landscape with a bucolic scene, which, according to the traditional title, represents the subject of the marriage of Isaac and Rebecca. However, the corresponding biblical passage does not fit, and it would therefore seem plausible that the title was added only later. It is possible, however, that Camillo Pamphilj, who commissioned the work, had asked Lorrain from the very beginning for a picture on a marriage theme on the occasion of his own wedding with Olimpia Aldobrandini, which took place in 1647.

The reconstruction of the catalogue of the works of Claude Lorrain is based on the fortunate existence of a notebook of the artist, with the name of “Liber Veritatis”, in which Lorrain, from 1636, reproduced his paintings faithfully in pen, to protect himself and his clients from falsifications, which were already widespread when the painter was in full activity. The album of the designs annotates exactly, on the “back” of each sheet, the name of who commissioned the work and where the work was intended to go.

From 1647 there also appears the date of execution. After various vicissitudes the volume ended up in England, and has been in the British Museum since 1957. The picture in question would seem to be the one referred to on sheet 113 of the “Liber”, where Lorrain noted “Painting made for the most excellent Prince Pamphilj”.

To complicate the matter, it is known that each one of the two paintings possesses a different “pendant”, designed to hang together with it. That in London, at the National Gallery, depicts the “Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba” and that too is dated 1648, while the Doria “pendant”, in the same Pamphilj collection, portrays a “View of Delphi”.

The at first sight unlikely hypothesis that the picture for Camillo is that in London and not the one always kept in the Palazzo Pamphilj in Rome, has been explained as follows: Prince Pamphilj originally ordered from Lorrain the two pictures today in London, which were executed in 1648 and faithfully documented by the inscriptions on the relative drawings as being works for Camillo.

They were completed but never delivered to the prince, perhaps because of what befell him (renouncing the cardinalship in 1647 in order to marry Olimpia Aldobrandini and the consequent temporary banishment ordered by his uncle, Innocent X), which kept him far from Rome until 1651. The Duc de Bouillon, therefore, who was leaving Rome in May 1647 could already see the paintings for Camillo in the “atelier” of Claude, and perhaps was able to acquire them when finished and no longer wanted by the man who had commissioned them.

In 1649, however, Lorrain had already begun the second version of the “Landscape with Mill”, that of the Doria Gallery, replicating the early composition and associating with it a different “pendant”, perhaps on the suggestion of Prince Pamphilj himself, who had again taken on the commission. In substance, the execution of the Doria canvasses would have followed the pair in the National Gallery by only a year.