Together with Caravaggio, Annibale Carracci was the most influential painter of the seventeenth century and a key figure in the development of classicism. This picture—a pivotal work—was painted for Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini shortly after Annibale's arrival in Rome in 1595; it remained in the Aldobrandini collection until 1800. In it, Annibale has brought together two currents of Italian painting: a northern Italian sensitivity to the effects of a natural-seeming light and color, and the careful spatial organization and idealized figure types associated with the High Renaissance. Raphael's Disputà in the Vatican inspired the hemispherical composition, while the figure of God the Father was based on a Roman sculpture.

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