Schack made the acquaintance of the landscape painter Carl Ross in Greece. In 1838–39 they travelled together in the Peloponnese and Anatolia. When Ross settled in Munich in 1851 he became one of the first artists from whom Schack acquired paintings. The grotto of the water-nymph Egeria was a classic motif in the environs of Rome, combining as it did the landscape of the south, ancient ruins and an evocation of the city’s legendary origins.