The composition of the picture offers great backdrops of trees, in the centre of which unravels the river, full of boats, with an ancient town in the background and figures of shepherds who lead their animals to pasture. Domenichino shows himself to be under the aegis of Annibale Carracci, whose tracks he follows, paralleling the classical landscape which appears in the Aldobrandini lunettes.

The compositional concept of this picture is the same as in the Aldobrandini “Flight into Egypt”, although here the young Domenichino is ingenuous and remote from the perfect elegance of Annibale. The small figures of the shepherds, slightly squat in their proportions, are to be found in the first landscapes of the studio of Annibale Carracci, from Giovan Battista Viola to Francesco Albani to Lanfranco.

In substance, we can note in this small picture the slightly clumsy ways of a genre of picture, that of the ideal landscape, at its early stages and in the process of being experimented with. It is a genre which Domenichino will soon abandon in favour of the more learned archaeological constructions of the painting of history.

It is possible that the picture passed to them by way of the inheritance of Pietro Aldobrandini, in whose inventories landscapes by Domenichino already appear in 1603.

Critics attribute the painting to the years 1605-7, when the painter was in contact with Giovan Battista Agucchi. Mancini mentions that Domenichino executed some landscapes of great fascination and perfection, a genre in which the artist excelled, for Monsignor Agucchi.