The present picture was first published in 1950 by Professor Luciano Bellosi, who initially associated it with Spinello's works in Pisa of c.1390 and in particular with a Madonna executed for a Pisan patron and dated 1389. He also noted, however, that the distinctive gilded pastiglia haloes are characteristic of Spinello's lucchese works of earlier in the decade and the present panel has indeed since been universally dated to the artist's years in Lucca in the 1380s. Lucca was then one of the most peaceful cities in Tuscany and was the first place that the artist settled after leaving his native Arezzo, probably soon after its sack by the troops of Alberigo di Barbiano in 1381. He is recorded as 'habitator civitatis lucannum' in a document of 1384 and it is first recorded in Florence in September 1387. While in Lucca he executed an altarpiece for the church of S. Ponziano, probably 1383/4 and an altarpiece for the church of S. Maria Nuova at Rome, which Vasari records was signed and dated 1385.