Comment 3 for bug 724982

As far as I can see, an easy workaround is to drag the transparent square to wherever you want it, and then switch to a different tool like for example the hand tool. The image will then reappear where you dragged the selection to. This probably means it's fixed by the tools commit/deactivation routine, so looking at it might give some clues to how one can solve this bug. On the other hand, it could be something cairo-related where the off-screen pixels simply aren't available.