This replica by Francesco of the original painted by his father in 1583-85 (London, National Gallery no. 228) exemplifies how Jacopo´s inventions were transformed and adapted by the bottega, sometimes with surprising results. Francesco was unable or unwilling to attempt the complex spatial arrangement of his father´s work, in which the indoor area opened onto the outdoor space at three points: two architraved doors in the right-hand wall, and an arcade in the background that provided the vanishing point of the composition. Francesco omitted the door farthest away from the spectator and, despite completely altering the composition by doing so, maintained the same vanishing lines that are found in the London version, ruining the spatial coherence.

Whereas Jacopo´s painting displays spatial continuity, in Francesco´s the foreground and background are completely dissociated from one another. The architecture does not shape the space; rather, it appears to be merely a backdrop that is unrelated to the action. This awkwardly and hastily drawn setting, probably entrusted to an assistant, contrasts with the more painstaking execution of the figures. The sensation of depth that the composition conveys is due less to the architecture than to the way in which Francesco varied the finish of the figures according to their distance from the spectator: the definition of those located in the foreground, the vaguer outlines of the merchants who are leaving the temple, and the ethereal priests on the stairs, sketched with extraordinarily free brushstrokes. The colour, which progressively loses its sharpness and brightness the further the viewer´s gaze recedes from the picture plane, also helps gradate the setting.

Regarding the supposed identification of Titian with the bearded money-changer on the left, who is also found in the London original, it should be noted that while Venetian painters commonly included portraits of their colleagues in compositions depicting crowds, and the association of Titian with a money-changer could allude to his well-known reputation as a miser, this particular physiognomy is fairly common in Jacopo Bassano´s oeuvre (Text drawn from Falomir, M.: Los Bassano en la España del Siglo de Oro, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2001, p. 222).