Evidently a fragment from the top of an altarpiece, the present panel was first identified as a work of Bartolomeo di Giovanni by Everett Fahy (private communication), who dated it to c. 1485. It was subsequently published by Nicoletta Pons, who pointed out that it is based on a drawing by Botticelli in the Uffizi (op. cit., p. 41, fig. 8), which suggests that the altarpiece may have been a work of collaboration between the two painters.

The artist's work was first grouped together by Bernard Berenson, who christened him 'Alunno di Domenico' because of his evidently close links with Ghirlandaio. His real name was revealed by documents published in 1902 showing that the predella he executed for Ghirlandaio's 'Adoration of the Maÿgi' altarpiece in the Museo degli Innocenti, Florence, was painted by 'Bartolomeo di Giovanni dipintore' in 1488. Berenson's idea of his artistic personality has been little changed by subsequent augmentations of his oeuvre (see E. Fahy, Bartolommeo di Giovanni Reconsidered, Apollo, May 1973, pp. 462-9; idem., Some Followers of Domenico Ghirlandaio, 1976, pp. 31-45 and 126-66, figs. 26-33; and idem., The Tornabuoni-Albizzi Panels, in Scritti di storia dell'arte in onore di Federico Zeri, 1984, I, pp. 233-6). Bartolomeo was presumably trained in the Ghirlandaio workshop, in which he first emerges in c. 1475 as a specialist in small scale figure works. He seems to have worked for Ghirlandaio for over a decade executing predella panels and background groups, and his master's influence is evident in his independent work, such as his masterpiece, 'The Argonauts in Colchis' of 1487 (sold, Sotheby's, London, Dec. 6, 1989, lot 106). The artist also executed to Botticelli's design 'Nastagio degli Onesti's Banquet in the Pine Grove' of c. 1483 in the Prado, and worked for Pintoricchio on his frescoes in the Appartamento Borgia. Bartolomeo occasionally painted on a larger scale as is attested by his 'Lamentation' at Toronto and the altarpiece of which the present picture originally formed part