This mythological scene is one of the three currently-known paintings by Pieter Fris. It depicts the moment when Orpheus, having descended into the realm of darkness to search for his wife Eurydice, killed by a snake bite, embraces her in the presence of Persephone and Hades, who has allowed him to rescue her from the Underworld and return her to life, provided he does not look back until he reaches daylight. On the left in the foreground, the boat carrying the doomed advances along the river Acheron, while the background is populated with tiny scenes of condemned souls doing penance.

The theme is taken from Ovid`s Metamorphoses (book X, 1–55).

However, the people who accompany the main characters in the poem are replaced here by a host of grotesque figures, demonic animals and monstrous beings, one of which carries a doomed soul through the air. These figures and the infernal setting place the scene within the tradition of Bosch (ca. 1450-1516), which lingered on for many years in Flanders and Holland through Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1525/30–1569), his son, Pieter Brueghel the Younger (1564/65–1637/38) and Jacob de Gheyn II (ca. 1565-1629) down to Jacob Isaacsz. van Swanenburgh (1571-1638), the first master of Rembrandt (1606-1669). The figure of the hanged man appears to be inspired by Salvator Rosa`s Witches at their Incantations, although the painting`s compositional structure is closer to scenes by Filippo Napoletano (1589–1629) such as Dante and Virgil in the Underworld (Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi) and Aeneas and the Sybil in the Underworld (Rome, Galleria Doria Pamphilj and Garofalo collection), and even to the 1634 engraving of St Anthony`s Temptations by Jacques Callot (1592-1635), with whom Napoletano had worked at the court of Cosimo II de` Medici in 1617 (Posada Kubissa, T.: Pintura holandesa en el Museo Nacional del Prado. Catálogo razonado, 2009, pp. 302-303).