Daphnis et Chloé, written by Longus in about the third century A.D., relates the story of two abandoned children, nursed in their infancy by animals, then discovered by the shepherds Lamon and Dryas and brought up by them to tend their sheep and goats on the island of Lesbos, Tériade's own island of birth. As the children grow up they fall in love and after a reunion, each with their real parents, they are married.

Tériade commissioned Chagall to illustrate Daphnis et Chloé in 1952 and Chagall made two journeys with his wife Vava to Greece and to the Greek islands. Chagall was enchanted by the landscape and the qualities of light which are fully realized in the romantic lyricism of the lithographs. Languid and graceful, the lovers float in dream-like landscapes of rich fluid colour; they embrace beneath shimmering moons in mysterious, deep blue pastures, and celebrate their union in joyous scenes of blazing oranges and reds, 'peopled' by the ethereal figures and beasts of Chagall's visionary world.

'De tous les livres de Chagall, Daphnis et Chloé est sans aucun doute celui où la couleur et la lumière atteignent leur plus grand degré de perfection. Toutes ces planches resplendissent de couleurs éclatantes' (Hommage à Tériade, p. 98)

'Chagall's Daphnis et Chloé adds an important title to the list of great illustrated books of our time' (Fernand Mourlot, The Lithographs of Chagall, André Sauret, Monte Carlo, 1963).