It began as "a 60/48 of antique peristyle, villa of 1820 & pool,"[1] done from imagination and, after moving to New York in 1944, also from library research on Roman buildings.
[6] His revised idea was that his architectural invention represented a Roman ruin in Syria that Chedanne bought and landscaped, and to which he added a pool.
[7] Ward believes that Dickinson had come to feel that in his prolonged work on Ruin at Daphne he had lost the sense of purpose that had given his art its direction, and that by copying El Greco's painting he not only renewed contact with the artist he most admired but the depicted city where had seen the El Greco painting of which he once said, "When I saw the Burial of Count Orgaz, I knew where my aspirations lay.
[11] In 1951, he put in more work on the painting, but only in early 1952, anticipating its exhibition in the Fifteen Americans exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (together with Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still and other major modernists), did he finally begin to overpaint the preliminary reds and pinks in which he had worked out the picture's design.
Elaine de Kooning's article, with photographs of its transformation, had a significant role in boosting Dickinson's recognition.