Painter of Calabrian origins, Mattia Preti worked mainly in Naples and Rome and ended his life in Malta.

The canvas, together with the one with the Raising of Lazarus , was probably painted in the seventh decade of the 17th century, during the painter's prolonged stay on the Mediterranean island. Made en pendant , the paintings show a profound knowledge of both the Roman pictorial culture between the 1630s and 1640s, in which the artist trained, and of the new suggestions assimilated by Preti following his activity in Naples.