A wide green bay opens in a bird's-eye view, with the white city of Naples and its long breakwater curving along the far shore and a hazy mountain rising at the right. Galleys and tall sailing ships crowd the water, some trading fire in the middle distance, while small boats scatter across the foreground. The Galleria Doria Pamphilj describes the scene as the port of Naples with a probably imaginary naval battle in progress. Pieter Bruegel the Elder visited Rome, Naples and Messina during his Italian journey, and the museum says the panel was painted in Italy, though its minute detail and bird's-eye view are typical of 16th-century Flemish landscape painting.

It calls it an early example of a genre of sea battles and storms that grew far more developed in the early eighteenth century. Two old records might refer to this panel: an inventory of 1607 belonging to Cardinal Perrenot de Granvelle and a list of Rubens's property from 1640. The panel later belonged to Prince Camillo Pamphilj, who had a passion for Flemish paintings. It is in the Galleria Doria Pamphilj in Rome.