Pieter Kempeneer, known in Spain as Pedro de Campaña, had a significant presence in Sevillian painting during his stay in that city between 1537 and his return to Brussels in 1562. That was a period of extraordinary economic, artist and social development for Seville, and Campaña had much in common with other Northern artists then active in that flourishing city. These artists provided images to the new parishes, convent churches, chapels and private prayer chapels that came into being over the course of the 16th century.
Educated in the Flemish tradition, Campaña spent a period in Italy (Bologna, Venice and Rome), where he probably had contact with early Roman mannerist painters such as Perino del Vaga (1501-1547) and Polidoro da Caravaggio (1492/1495 - 1543). There, he developed a type of painting that combined Northern Europe's dramatic pathos with much of the monumentality, compositional sense and colors of Roman painting.