Although the present painting would appear to be a relatively late work, it still reflects the influence of Romanelli's master Pietro da Cortona, alongside whom he had executed frescoes in the chapel of Palazzo Barberini in Rome in 1631-2, the composition loosely recalling that of Pietro da Cortona's picture of the same subject in the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida, generally dated c. 1637 (which Romanelli certainly knew, as he borrowed the pose of Hagar for his Venus and Adonis in the Musée des Jacobins, Morlaix).

While it has not been possible to verify the claim made in the 1882 sale catalogue that the present picture was acquired from the Orléans Collection, a painting of this subject by Romanelli was sold by a Mrs William Ince at Christie's on 1 March 1805, lot 93 (3gns. to Woodburn; see The Index of Paintings Sold in the British Isles during the Nineteenth Century, I, 1801-1805, ed. B.B. Fredericksen, Santa Barbara and Oxford, 1988, p. 627).

Christopher Beckett Denison was one of the great collectors of his day; his sale at Christie's in 1885 lasted 22 days, and comprised 3,354 lots (not including the contents of the library and cellar).