Provenance Private collection Versailles & Bordeaux. XIXth century framing. E.Luther Cary in « Artists past & present Random studies » of 1909 spoke about his "antique austerity" :  "in 1889 he started for Rome, where he spent four profitable years. The fruit of this Roman period has continued to ripen up to the present time... He ... painted in Rome a Pieta, a Crucifixion and a number of pictures in which problems of open-air painting are attacked...To turn from these to the two religious paintings executed in Rome, is to realize that eccentric as Klinger often is, both in choice of subject and treatment, his attitude toward the mysteries and problems of man's existence is that of a serious thinker with a strong artistic talent, but a still stronger intelligence... we find in his art the quality of nobility, a certain breadth, which in spite of innovations in execution and _almost trivial symbolic detail, impresses upon his conceptions the classic mark.”