Schiavone was highly valued by Stuart collectors as a Venetian Mannerist working in the tradition of Bellini, Giorgione and Titian. His popularity has diminished over time, but the monograph exhibition at Venice's Museo Correr in 2016 is part of a wider attempt reinstate the artist's prior distinction. 

Out of the seven scenes of which this is a part, three scenes are obviously part of the Jacob story (nos 1,2,6) and these kept their titles over the centuries, but the others have been given general titles such as 'figures in a landscape' apart from no. 7 which by the nineteenth century was thought to represent The Departure of Briseis, a story from the Iliad (i. 184). Briseis was the prize of Achilles who was forced to surrender her to Agamemnon. It would have been very unusual for narrative scenes from the Old Testament and classical stories to be combined in one room in sixteenth century Venice. It is possible that this group of paintings is made up of paintings originally in two rooms, one decorated with Old Testament stories, the other classical. However, the sizes and format of the seven paintings clearly work as an integral group and make it more likely this was one room decoration. It is also highly unlikely that a sixteenth century patron would have commissioned stories from the Iliad which was only widely known in the nineteenth century. The cleaning and conservation of the four panels exhibited and a close examination of all the panels has revealed that it is possible that all the paintings tell the story of Jacob from Genesis xxvi – xxxv as discussed below. 

Jacob travels back to Esau and on the way Jacob is on his own and wrestles with a divine being through the night (Genesis xxxii). As dawn breaks Jacob will not let him go unless he blesses him. When God blesses him Jacob is renamed Israel. In a dramatic landscape in no. 5 only two figures are depicted as Jacob clasps the waist of God requesting his blessing. The wrestling and then the blessing is a rare moment in the Old Testament when man physically touches the divine. The figure of God is close to representations of God in the first scenes in the Loggia frescoes and in Giulio Romano's Dream of Jacob (Dacos 1986 xxv (VI. 1).

Like his contemporaries, Schiavone and his workshop assistants must have produced a large number of this type of small narrative paintings for the decoration of furniture or the panelling of a room. This series of paintings telling the Story of Jacob are not as refined as others from his workshop such as the more meticulously painted group telling the story of Diana and Callisto (cat. nos xx National Gallery, London and Musee de Picardie, Amiens (Penny 2008, pp.114-123). They are too long and thin for the decoration of chests. The participants in each scene are arranged across the foreground and are very gestural, so that each story can be read from a distance. The story of Jacob is about a series of dramatic encounters in the open and here it is the landscape that both unites and dominates each episode. The story of Jacob is about the meeting of men and women and their love and loyalty for each other. It is about establishing families and from that nations and providing for them using the fertility of the land. The story would have been suitable for a marriage bed or the panelling of a bedchamber. The White Room at St James’s Palace seems to have been used by both the Duke and the Duchess of York but the fact that the Story of Jacob was displayed beneath six portraits of ladies at the Stuart court, commissioned by the Duchess, places the room and the paintings in it in her sphere of influence. As Wenzel has pointed out when the Schiavone panels were moved to Kensington Palace around 1697 they were hung in the Queen’s apartments (Wenzel 2002, p.210).