Painted in Bril's most advanced style, the present picture is datable after c.1621/2, when he worked alongside Domenichino, Guercino and Viola on the lunettes in the Stanza dei Paesi in the Casino Ludovisi in Rome; their influence is already reflected in the Landscape with Cephalus and Procris of 1621 in the Galleria Nazionale, Rome (L. Salerno, Pittori di paesaggio del Seicento a Roma, I, Rome, 1977/8, p.16 and p.27, pl.2.18). The figures in the present picture are the work of another hand. Bril's most frequent collaborator on staffage in his last years was Pietro Paolo Bonzi, il Gobbo dei Carracci (see ibid., p.28, pl.2.20, and pp.100-111). Dr. Stephen Pepper has suggested (private communication) that they may be the work of Giuseppe Cesari, il Cavaliere d'Arpino (1568-1640). The figures in a Bril 'Paysage avec rochers ... une chute d'eau en forme
de rivière dans laquelle se baignent Diane et ses Nymphs' were credited to 'Le Josépin' in the catalogue of the Randon de Boisset sale in Paris in 1777.

George Byng also purchased at Sir Simon Clarke's posthumous sale in 1840 the Guido Reni Magdalen offered as lot 55 in the present sale