Signed and dated 1597, this oil is a rare survival by Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem (1562–1638), one of the three founders of the Haarlem Academy and among the leading exponents of Dutch Mannerism at the turn of the seventeenth century.

Published in P. van Theil's 1999 catalogue raisonné of the artist's work as untraced, the painting's whereabouts had been unrecorded in the scholarly literature for decades before it resurfaced – a genuine rediscovery of a documented but long-lost work by one of Haarlem's most significant Old Masters.