The subject is taken from Guarini's Il Pastor Fido, Act 4, Scenes 8-9. Silvio falls in love with Dorinda after accidentally wounding her while hunting. Having broken his bow in anguish (shown here lying on the ground in two pieces), Silvio asks for his own breast to be pierced by an arrow; this is the scene usually depicted, as in Pieter van Lint's much smaller picture purchased by the Budapest Museum in 1987 (Goztola, op. cit., p.40, fig.25; A. McNeil Kettering, The Dutch Arcadia. Pastoral Art and its Audience in the Golden Age, 1983, p.194 and fig.179). Although it has been suggested that the present painting is a portrait historié, the facial types closely resemble those in the Budapest picture