German views of Greece were governed more by ideas expounded by the classical scholar Johann Joachim Winckelmann and the poet Friedrich Hölderlin than by direct experience. Rottmann was among the few German painters actually to have visited the country. Kallirrhoe spring lay not far from the Olympieion, in the bed of the river Ilissos, and was famous in antiquity as the chief source of water in Athens. Rottmann, however, shows an empty, barren landscape based on studies he had made from nature. Schack wrote of this painting: `The chants of the priests who once walked here in solemn procession have fallen silent, and the only sign of life that strikes the ear is the chirping of thirsty cicadas.¿