Madame Paola Pächt-Bassani dates the present picture c.1622-24 during the artist's stay in Rome, and will include it in her forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the work of Vignon. She compares it to a series of larger pictures of saints surrounded by books; Saints Augustine and Jerome in the Abbey of La Cava dei Tirreni, near Naples (see A. Brejon de Lavergnée and J.P. Cuzin, A propos de caravagesques français, Revue du Louvre et des Musées de France, 1974, illustrated p. 26) and Saint Matthew and the Angel in the Galleria Sabauda, Turin (ibid., illustrated p. 27).
Pächt-Bassani also points out the possible relationship between the present picture and a painting of the same size and subject mentioned in the 1627 inventory of the collection of Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte: 'un quadro di S. Pavolo di quattro palmi con la cornice negre di mano del Vignone' (see. C. L. Frommel, Caravaggios Frühwerk und der Kardinal Francesco Maria del Monte, Storia dell'Arte, 9 Oct. 1971, pp. 5-56)