San Tiziano, bishop of Brescia between 526–540, was initially buried in the old church of the Saints Cosma and Damiano, which stood until the end of the thirteenth century in front of the Brolleto.

In 1298, at the behest of Berardo Maggi and as part of the expansion of the public palazzo, the church and the attached nunnery were demolished to create an urban space west of the Broletto, which currently constitutes the northern end of the Piazza del Duomo.

In 2007, Vito Zani proposed the attribution of the ark to the Sanmicheli workshop, as part of a series of sculptural works that the family of artists would have made between the 1480s and the early 16th century.

[5] Matteo Sanmicheli's Piedmontese career began with a statuette in the lost tomb of Maria di Serbia in Casale Monferrato, dated to 1510; this has clear references to figures in the candelabrum of the pilasters in the Cavalli chapel of the San Pietro church, Oliveto, completed in 1508.

[8] While several commissions, notably the Caprioli chapel and the ornamentation of San Pietro in Oliveto, seem to have been shared by the competitors, Cairano's riposte came in 1508, with the Ark of Sant'Apollonio.

[10] In 2010, Giuseppe Sava reconstructed the figure of Antonio Medaglia, the little-known architect of the church of San Pietro in Oliveto, proposing a catalog of works.

Sava then assigns all these works to a sculptor influenced by Stefano Lamberti, albeit erring in reading the date on the coping of the ark as 1519 instead of 1529.

[2] The question of assignment of the work therefore remains open: if it can be postdated to the 1520s, it might be attributable to Lamberti's disciple, in which case at least the statues of the ark would be taken away from Matteo Sanmicheli's oeuvre.