Salviati belonged to a generation of Florentine painters characterised by the sophistication of their visual language and by a deliberate formal and conceptual complexity. Having trained with Andrea del Sarto, he moved to Rome in 1531. He subsequently worked in Bologna and Venice, settling in Florence in 1543 where he painted this panel for his friend Pasquino Bertini. Its elegance and the stylisa
According to the opinion of Turner, the style is typical of Salviati, especially in the treament of the curvilinear flames that spurt out from the torch´s end.