The composition derives from the woodcut of c.1510 in Dürer's 'Small Passion'. The picture was sold in 1932 with a certificate by Max J. Friedländer, dating from the same year, as the work of an artist in Dürer's circle. Ernst Buchner is said to have proposed in a private communication an attribution to Hans Springinklee (active 1512-c.1524), a painter, designer of woodcuts, block-cutter and miniaturist, who was a pupil and imitator of Dürer and lived in his house in Nuremberg. He was commissioned in 1520 to assist in the painting of a ceiling
in Nuremberg Castle (destroyed in 1945) and J. Dettenthaler (in Mitteilungen des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg, 63, 1976, pp.145ff.) has attributed to him fifteen other paintings. As John Rowlands points out (in the catalogue of the exhibition, The Age of Dürer and Holbein. German Drawings 1400-1550, The British Museum, London, 1988, p.138) 'similarities to the style of the Danube School in his [two] signed drawings, and in some of the paintings attributed to him, suggest that Springinklee was influenced by Albrecht Altdorfer'