Just having arrived home from Italy Thorvaldsen purchased this Lundbye painting, which depicts children and adults, sheep, cows and birds in carefree interaction of the sunny banks of Denmark’s largest lake, Arresø. Lundbye, however, does not settle with just the depiction of typical Danish idyll. Being a National Romantic he is preoccupied with implying the special historical prerequisites of the idyll, which is why he paints, in the lower foreground to the left, the remnants of a burial mound and in the lower background to the right, a church over which a beautiful, white cloud accumulates. If you were to express with words what Lundbye here visualises, the result would be something along the lines of: from ancient times and up to the present the Christian faith has been the spiritual point of orientation for the Danes.