The painting depicts Boabdil, having ceded Granada to the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella, turning to take a last look at the city he has lost, before going into exile.

[6][b] The writer Giles Tremlett, in his 2012 study, Ghosts of Spain, notes the traditional name for the road Boabdil took, "La Cuesta de Las Lágrimas - the Slope of Tears".

[10] Francisco Pradilla Ortiz (1848-1921) served brief terms as director, firstly of the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome and then at the Prado Museum, but worked primarily as a practising artist.

"[12] The Sigh of the Moor was begun at around the same time as Pradilla’s The Surrender of Granada, commissioned by the Spanish Senate, the upper house of the Cortes Generales, in 1879.

[17] The focus of the image is the landscape around Granada, and it depicts Boabdil, dismounted and with a small band of followers behind him, staring back at the city from the mountain pass.