Although this painting was long considered to be a work by Otto Vaenius and more briefly assigned to Cornelis Ketel, its source was correctly identified in the 1978 catalogue of the Wadsworth Atheneum as a print of 1589 by Aegidius Sadeler after a design by Hans von Aachen, which in turn was based on an invention by Georg Hoefnagel (Wadsworth Atheneum, op. cit., p. 111. fig. 1). It was also engraved by Jacob Matham after an inscribed and dated drawing of 1587 by Hendrick Goltzius (see Bartsch, III, p. 158, no. 160i). E. Reznicek cites this drawing as evidence that Goltzius used the works of other artists besides Bartholomew Spranger as models at this time (see E.K.L. Reznicek, Die Zeichnungen von Hendrick Goltzius, 1961). The subject of the Three Fates, entitled Nicomaxia Vitae (The Victorius Conquest of Life) is discussed in detail in Hartford's catalogue.