The subject comes from Ovid's Metamorphoses and tells of the nymph, Syrinx's flight from the lustful Pan; at last she reaches the river Ladon and has to be turned into a reed to save herself. Pan here embraces reeds instead of flesh; he subsequently makes his pipes out of his transformed love.

If this were by Rubens himself he would have painted the figures and commissioned Jan Brueghel or Jan Wildens to paint the landscape. Unfortunately technical examination reveals nothing in the paint layers or style to suggest that figures and landscape are by different hands. Moreover each part is executed too carefully to be by Rubens himself. This is probably a version of a lost Rubens original by an extremely competent member of his studio, painted in the 1620s.