Second-generation Pre-Raphaelite John Roddam Spencer Stanhope owned a villa near Florence, which enabled him to study Italian art firsthand. This painting is considered his masterpiece, and it debuted at the opening exhibition of London's progressive Grosvenor Gallery in 1877. At this time, the Aesthetic movement was introduced through works that prioritized beauty over narrative. Inspired by the Italian Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli, Stanhope painted the landscape and figures with both color harmony and compositional balance—from the delicate flowers in the foreground to the rhythm of the dancers in the central background.