The son of a well known artist of the same name who specialized in the painting of church windows, Jacques de Gheyn II was born in Antwerp but became a student of Hendrick Goltzius in Haarlem in 1585-7. Less well known than his many virtuoso drawings and engravings are his few surviving paintings. The present work is similar in composition to two other allegories of unequal love, now lost, engraved from designs by Jacques de Gheyn II (see van Regteren Altena op. cit., II, pp. 54-5, nos. 211-2). These engravings depict the two sides of the traditional love triangle of unequal love, namely a young woman between an old and young man, and a young man bracketed by an old and young woman. However in the prints the figure of Death attends the old man and woman. The theme of the love triangle can be traced to paintings by Lucas van Leyden, prints by Netherlandish and German printmakers such as Urs Graf, and medieval illuminations; on the subject's history, see Alison Stewart, Unequal Lovers. A Study of Unequal Couples in Northern Art (1977).