After training with his father, Pietro Antonio, Novelli moved to Palermo in 1618 where he came under the influence of Sir Anthony van Dyck who was resident there in 1624. Novelli left Palermo around 1630-1 and traveled to the mainland where he visited Rome and Naples. Executed in the early 1630's, prior to his return to Sicily in 1633, the present painting can be compared to the David with the Head of Goliath in the J. Paul Getty Museum, California, datable to circa 1630-1 (see T. Viscuso, in the catalogue of the exhibition, Pietro Novelli, E il Suo Ambiente, Palermo, June 10-October 30, 1990, p. 260, no II.38). The striking similarity between the pose of the figure in the present painting and that of the Getty painting where the figure is seated in a three-quarter length, animated position and in which the caravaggesque interest in chiaroscuro is prevalent, attests to the marked change in his style following his encounter with Neapolitan naturalism, particularly that of artists such as Andrea Vaccaro and Massimo Stanzione who stimulated in him a new interest in light and color