The painting gained attention among contemporary French art critics, and remains one of Flandrin's best-known works, despite being produced relatively early in his career.

The subject is an unidentified youth, an "ephebe",[1] who sits nude on a rock with his arms wrapped around his legs and his head resting on his knees, eyes closed.

The enigmatic scene provides no explanation for the figure's pose: Théophile Gautier (1811–1872) commented that the young man could be shipwrecked on a deserted island, or be a shepherd who has lost his flock.

[2] In examining the influence of German aesthetic theory on French art, critic Elizabeth Prettejohn finds that the roundedness of form and "flawless" modeling of flesh would have met with Johann Joachim Winckelmann's approval as an exemplar of the beautiful.

The painting was similarly evoked in early twentieth-century art photography by F. Holland Day and Wilhelm von Gloeden, and later by Robert Mapplethorpe.