Alexander Rothaug was active as a painter, stage designer and illustrator in Munich and his native Vienna in the waning years of the 19th century and into the first half of the 20th. Trained at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts by the Orientalist painter Leopold Carl Müller, Rothaug would go on to create his own distinctive style which defies easy classification. With an enduring interest in depicting ancient mythology and Germanic and Norse heroes, Rothaug’s work blends the Classicism he had been taught at the Academy with elements of Jugendstil and also the arresting, atmospheric Symbolism of Franz von Stuck, under whose sway the artist fell during his time in Munich.
Around the turn of the century Rothaug traveled widely in southern Europe, including around Dalmatia, Bosnia, Italy and Spain, where the present painting is set. The architecture in this work bears strong similarities to the castle and 16th century tower found in the Spanish coastal town of Tossa de Mar in Catalonia. The tower, known as the Torre des Moros (Tower of the Moors), is actually located in the hills overlooking the town, but the Castillo de Tossa de Mar is situated on the coast, partially extending on a rocky outcrop into the sea. It is possible that Rothaug saw both sites while on his travels and conflated them into a single architectural motif, adding the imagined figurative elements to create a historicizing episode within this dramatic setting.