The subject of the painting was identified by Jennifer Montagu as an illustration of Act 2, scene 1 of Guarini's Il Pastor Fido, first produced at Crema in 1595 and published in 1602, but reprinted, imitated and translated many times. In Guarini's story, the union of the faithless nymph and the faithful shepherd was the means of preserving Arcadia from the ravages announced by the oracles (correspondence, 1973). Dr Montagu also referred to the feathered head-dress worn by Amarillis as a typical stage prop in seventeenth-century Holland.

The painting is signed and dated, although the date is not fully legible. M. Roethlisberger proposed the date 1645, since this work has the large-scale figures, the composition and the increasing interest in history painting that characterises this stage of Breenbergh's career. The classical ruins on the left correspond to the typical imaginary settings favoured by Dutch Italianate landscape painters working in Rome at the time, but Breenbergh also represented the Torre delle Milizie as part of the townscape on the right. The popularity of the subject is evidenced by the near-contemporary versions painted by Anthony Van Dyck (Goteborg) and Van Poelenburg (Bodemuseum, Berlin, cat. no. 956).

By the time John Bowes bought this painting in Paris, Bartholomeus Breenbergh's works, rather popular in eighteenth-century France, had gone out of fashion.