Burne-Jones first visited Italy at Ruskin's expense, in 1859, and made a second journey in 1852. In 1859 he took Ruskin's writing as his guide; in 1862 he and Ruskin traveled for some of the time together, and made studies in Milan from Bernardino Luini (1481-1532) side by side. Burne-Jones and his wife Georgiana then move on to Venice, where he made a number of studies such as this one, commissioned by Ruskin. Ruskin was anxious to record paintings that were threatened by restoration, but as John Christian argues, the subjects were "clearly selected with the copyists artistic welfare in very much in mind" (Wildman and Christian 1998 p.83). He was trying to steer Burne-Jones away from the medievalising influence of Rossetti towards the more classical repose of Tintoretto and Veronese. Ruskin, Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites: 2000, p. 141