Though difficult to place precisely, the present painting seems to date from the last decade of Luti's life, during which he was appointed Principe of the Accademia di San Luca, Rome, in what is widely thought to be his best period. He was not a prolific artist and there are few works by him executed in oil which were not documented commissions that can be surely dated. However, Luti was an accomplished draughtsman and some of his dated drawings have helped to shed light on the sequence in which his style evolved. With particular relevance to the present painting are several academic drawings that can be dated after 1715, and two red chalk drawings in Christ Church, Oxford of single male nudes. The Christ Church academies (nos. 1226 UM84 & 1227 UM85), and other male nude studies in the Louvre, Paris (16726F) and in the Biblioteca Marucelliana, Florence (vol. N4 & vol. E52), all share similar characteristics, with male nudes set within defused landscapes and can be dated to Luti's final years, between 1718-22. They display a monumentality of form as well as an interest in chiaroscuro and the patterning of light to create simplified forms of solid proportions. These drawings were conceived in conjunction with his academic activities and intended as demonstration pieces, virtuoso examples of his skill as a draughtsman of the male nude.

His only known male nude in a landscape, the present painting can be convincingly given to Benedetto Luti and regarded as a translation in oils of the red-chalk drawings of his late classicism. With this work Luti fully realises many of the ideas he began developing following his arrival in Rome in 1690, from his famous Cain and Abel of 1692 at Kedleston Hall and progressing through his work for the Palatine Elector Johann Wilhelm and for Lothar Frans von Schönborn at Pommersfelden from 1713-17, to The Prophet Isaiah in San Giovanni in Laterano, Rome, and The Vision of Saint Anthony of Padua for the Altarpiece in the Odescalchi Chapel in Santi Apostoli, Rome, datable to circa 1722