This poetic picture of a shepherd contemplating the sensuous figure of a sleeping nymph was painted in Rome under the influence of Titian, whose pastoral imagery inspired Poussin at about the same time. A native of the Oldenburg region near Denmark, Liss was the only seventeenth-century German artist of international stature after Adam Elsheimer (1579–1610).

The naturalism of Liss's rustic couple reflects his training in Haarlem about 1615–19 and his subsequent pause in Antwerp en route to Italy. Dutch artists placed new emphasis on drawing from live models, while Rubens and his circle would have provided Liss with his first impressions of Baroque styles derived from Rome. However, it was two periods of work in Venice, about 1620–22 and about 1626–31, that turned Liss into a master of painterly effects, resonant color, and evocative atmosphere. Before his early death, Liss came to be regarded as the heir of Titian and Veronese and as the successor to the recently deceased Domenico Fetti.

The frank eroticism of Liss's mythological pictures earned him the nickname "Pan" among northern artists in Rome. But in this recently rediscovered canvas the artist also suggests an Arcadian age of innocence, when youthful beauty was a sign of grace.