This painting is composed of four oak boards, which have been sourced to the eastern Baltic around modern-day Poland. Since oak from this region was the high-quality wood of choice during the sixteenth century and could be bought across Europe this identification does not provide a definitive confirmation of the painting’s country of origin.

Dendrochronology – scientific analysis of the sequences of tree rings in the panels – suggests that the wood used was felled between c.1527 and c.1543. On the basis of panel analysis alone, a latest date for the painting is difficult to establish with certainty, although the wood is unlikely to have been left unused for decades after felling.