Bartholomaeus Spranger had assisted in completing an interrupted fresco project during a ten-year period spent in Rome and Parma.

While working in Paris around 1565, the Antwerp native had been influenced by the work of Francesco Primaticcio and Niccolò dell' Abbate.

Returning to Rome in 1567, he had become an assistant to Taddeo Zuccari, and had later worked for the emperor Maximilian II in Vienna, where he had made a successful career.

Maximilian's son, Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor, is to prove an even better patron than his father would have been, and Spranger will never leave his service.

The court had soon transferred to Prague, safer from the regular Turkish invasions.

He had in 1581 been appointed court painter in Prague by Rudolf, and will remain in this city hereafter.

Rudolf is to become an obsessive collector of old and new art, his artists mixing with the astronomers, clockmakers, botanists, and "wizards, alchemists and kabbalists" who Rudolf also gathers around him.