Academic literature on Francesco Salviati in recent decades places the fresco cycle in the chapel of the Margrave of Brandenburg in Santa Maria dell'Anima during the painter's Roman period, subsequent to 1547-1548.
However, this conviction is based on rather fragile foundations.
Considerations of a stylistic nature, historical context and documentary evidence, as well as the evidence of certain literary sources, show instead that the 'Stories of Christ' in the Roman church of Santa Maria dell'Anima belong to a different and earlier period of the painter's career, or rather, Salviati's previous stay in Rome between 1541 and 1543 (as in fact Vasari asserts), marked by the artist's response to the great event of that time – the revelation of Michelangelo's 'Last Judgement' in the Sistine Chapel. Salviati's subsequent involvement in work on the margrave's chapel, documented to 1549-1550, was limited to the two compartments with grotesques at the sides of the altar, clearly associated with formulas developed by Perin del Vaga in Rome in the second half of the 1540s.