Coming from the Vendramin collection, where it was found until at least 1601 in the company of other autographs by Giorgione such as the Tempesta, the work was subsequently purchased by the merchant Cristoforo Orsetti, who remembers it in his will of 1664 and then passed by inheritance to the collection of the son of these, John the Baptist. Only later, on an unspecified date, did it pass into the Manfrin collections from where, in 1856, it was purchased by the Italian state along with other important paintings.

A cornerstone of Giorgione's limited catalog, the work still surprises today for the absolute peculiarity of its subject, an elderly lady depicted with extreme realism, her face marked by time with deep wrinkles and imperfect or missing teeth. From the Vendramin inventory of 1601, it is inferred that La Vecchia was preserved with a "blanket" (or that served for this purpose), depicting a male effigy, whose combined reading could help to understand its hidden meaning, perhaps even more complex. of a simple meditation on the theme of vanitas. Compared to the contemporary Venetian artistic scenario, Giorgione's revolutionary choice to devote himself to a similar theme with such a direct approach appears undoubted, certainly inspired on the one hand by Leonardo's studies (note the similarity between the Old Woman and the apostle Philip inside del Cenacolo di Santa Maria delle Grazie), on the other hand to some Nordic prototypes - think for example of the Portrait of a Young Man by Dürer of Vienna which had on the back a figure of an elderly woman with a lot of coins. It is plausible that the subject had a clear meaning for the commissioner of the work, probably Gabriele Vendramin himself, also considering the presence of the family crest on the ancient frame, a meaning to which the cartouche with the words "with time", likely incipit, could allude a quote or a message.