The donor on the right suggests that the picture was destined for a chapel or altar. The use of a poplar panel makes it likely that the picture was painted in Italy. The presence of Italianate ruins in the background, including the immediately recognisable Baths of Caracalla in Rome, is, however, common in pictures executed both in Italy and the North as seen in Maerten van Heemskerck’s self-portrait in front of the Colosseum, Rome, in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, painted long after the artist had visited Italy.