The story of Tarquin and Lucretia is familiar from Italian Renaissance painting especially the Titian in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. According to the legend Sextus, son of Tarquinius Superbus (last King of Rome, reigned 534-510BC) attempted to rape Lucretia, wife of Tarquinius Collatinus, who was reputedly one of the founders of the Roman Republic 509BC. After telling her husband of the outrage, Lucretia committed suicide. The treatment of the subject here is an unusual one showing Sextus Tarquinius being restrained as Lucretia kills herself with a dagger. Dated pictures of any type are rare in the Netherlands in the 1560s owing to the fact that the iconoclastic crisis was at its height, but this picture would have escaped the destruction as it was an historical rather than religious subject.

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