[3] Aspects of the painting reflect and connect with the setting it was made for, an elaborate newly-built funerary chapel, which in the Renaissance Republic of Florence aspired to revive the imperial style of many centuries before, drawing on the Late Antique monuments of Ravenna.

Francesco Albertini, writing in 1510, attributes this painting and others to Piero alone,[8] but Giorgio Vasari, in his joint biography of the brothers, describes it and other works as collaborative efforts by them both.

[10] In the 20th century it became usual to give Antonio the main share,[11] but in recent years it has been ascribed to Piero alone by Aldo Galli.

He was eventually released, after pleas from his aunt, Isabella of Portugal, Duchess of Burgundy to whose court he went, later embarking on a career in the church.

[18] Linda Koch has suggested that the overall architectural design and decoration of the chapel represented an attempt to evoke Early Christianity, and was much influenced by the imperially sponsored churches of Ravenna.

[19] In terms of the altarpiece, apart from the unusual general richness of the saints' clothing, and their rather static poses, each stands on a rota or circle of the most valuable and luxurious architectural stones, from the left: serpentine, porphyry, and a "mottled tan marble".

[20] These echo the rotae of real porphyry on the Cosmatesque floor of the chapel, and in the tomb on the surface below the sarcophagus, and evoke imperial monuments of the ancient past.