It is hard now to imagine how exciting to young artists the prospect of travel must have seemed after the upheaval of the Napoleonic Wars had effectively blockaded the British on their island for decades and denied them access to the cities of Europe, with their great art collections, and the sights of the Classical world. Safe at last, Eastlake left for Rome in September 1816, at the age of 23. This was nearly ten years before Corot's first trip to Italy. Rome 'gave to the young Eastlake far more than Oxford or Cambridge could have offered. He pursued there, with an awakened mind, studies for which the universities made no provision; he gained confidence that he could make himself agreeable...;  and he painted, living close to longed for scenes - all Rome, all Italy.' [Robertson, p 11] Rome at that time was teeming with young artists from France, Germany and Scandinavia, and was a melting pot of ideas and influences. Friends who saw Eastlake painting out-of-doors in August, under the burning sun, without an umbrella, called him 'the Salamander'. He wrote 'there is so much to be done here! If a man works hard, and studies in Italy, he cannot stay too long.'

He is likely to have painted the present work out-of-doors in 1819. The next year, the effects of the sun upon him took its toll on his health, particularly his eyes, and at the news of the death of his father in December 1820 he returned to England, with many oil sketches in his luggage.

There is a village just sketched in under the mountain in the far middle ground, and a goatherd on the ridge in the foreground, but the topography is not distinct enough to tell in which country it was painted, Greece or Italy.