The picture is one of eight which were acquired from the artist by William Imrie (1837-1906), one of a group of Liverpool shipowners and merchants who formed important collections at this period. Others were T.H. Ismay, Imrie's partner in the White Star Line; George Holt, whose collection still exists at Sudley; and F.R. Leyland, the well-known patron of Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Whistler and Moore, whose example, one suspects, was a catalyst for the rest. They bought many of the same artists, and Ismay's country house, Dawpool, in Cheshire, was designed by Norman Shaw, who was also responsible for Leyland's famous 'aesthetic' interior at 49 Prince's Gate in London. Imrie's collection, which was sold after his death by Christie's, included examples of Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Leighton, Alma-Tadema, Spencer Stanhope and Dicksee, as well as six Strudwicks and the eight De Morgans. He was in fact Evelyn's most important patron; his purchases, all probably made in 1890s, went far to support her and her husband at a time when William De Morgan's pottery was in financial trouble and he was not yet launched on his second and highly successful career as a novelist.

The picture shows a rich woman or courtesan laying aside her jewels as she looks up at a tapestry or mural representing the marriage of St Francis to the Lady Poverty (hence the inscription below, 'Povertas Nupt...'). These figures are clearly adapted from a group in one of the frescoes by Giotto and his assistants on the vault of the Lower Church at Assisi (see Cesare Brandi, Giotto, 1983, p.159, repr.). Evelyn may well have seen the fresco on one of her numerous visits to Italy, or she may have known the design in reproduction, possibly the engraving in William Young Ottley's Florentine School (1826) which her mentor Burne-Jones had copied in an early sketchbook (Victoria and Albert Museum). The rejection of riches and worldly success was a popular theme with artists in this tradition. 'For He Had Great Possessions' by G.F. Watts, another of Evelyn's masters, dates, in its definitive form (Tate Gallery; on loan to Leighton House) from 1894, two years before our picture. Arthur Hacker's The Cloister or the World (Bradford) is exactly contemporary, being exhibited at the R.A. in 1896; while Frank Dicksee's The Two Crowns (Tate Gallery) appeared at the R.A. in 1900, when it was voted the best picture of the year by readers of the Daily News and bought for the Chantrey Bequest.