The painting and its companion, Fishing, were included in Charles Le Brun's inventory in 1683, and in November 1695 they were in the apartments of King Louis XIV's younger brother.

It was no doubt for this purpose that they were given two sumptuous gilt frames, each with attributes suited to the subject of the painting – among the finest examples of the art of frame-making in the time of Louis XIV.

[1] This work, together with its companion, date from Carracci's Bolognese period, before he left for Rome in 1595 to paint at the Galleria Farnese.

At this time he was extremely interested in landscape, and his experiments are a foreshadowing of Poussin's classical compositions; but in these pictures he is exploring in a different direction, in the tradition of the Bassani, a family of painters whose studios continued to turn out landscapes which were prized all over Europe.

Manet found inspiration in the Fishing, and the Hunting has been copied by Matisse, Edvard Munch and Rouault.