Arriving in Rome soon after 1600 to help his compatriot Annibale Carracci with the Farnese Gallery, Domenichino soonafter was given a commission for frescos at the abbey at Grottoferrata. This project established him as a leading painter of baroque classicism. Domenichino rarely created large genre landscapes after he and his assistants finished the Apollo frescos at the Villa Aldobrandini around 1608; however, he produced a limited number of small paintings of that subject in oil. He made roughly twenty easel landscapes for patrons who commissioned other work. The present sheet might be an example of what Richard Spear has called Domenichino's "early method of composing landscapes with interlocking but thematically isolated genre incidents" that look to Annibale's work for guidance (Richard Spear. Domenichino. New Haven and London, 1982).
McCrindle, Joseph F., former owner.