This is a study for the picture commissioned by Cardinal Gian Carlo de' Medici (1611-1663), which subsequently passed into the collection of the Marchese Carlo Gerini in Florence (fig. 1), Detroit, The Detroit Institute of Arts and elsewhere, Gli Ultimi Medici, Il tardo barocco a Firenze, 1670-1743, 1974, no. 188a, illustrated. According to Bellori, the picture was painted when the artist was at Castello. When Gerini acquired the Rest on the Flight to Egypt, he commissioned a pendant for Volteranno representing the Way to the Calvary.
A drawing for the group of the Virgin is in the Uffizi (15366F) and another for the whole composition is in the Albertina, A. Stix and L. Frölich-Bum, Beschreibender Katalog der Handzeichnungen in der Graphischen Sammlung Albertina, Die Zeichnungen der toskanischen, umbrischen und römischen Schulen, Vienna, 1932, no. 649, pl. 144.