The first twenty years of the career of Sano di Pietro, otherwise a highly prolific artist, are undocumented. Some scholars believe that the youthful Sano is responsible for works traditionally ascribed to an anonymous painter known as the Master of the Osservanza, while others argue that Sano and the Master of the Osservanza are distinct artists who collaborated in one of the professional partnerships common in Siena in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This painting formed part of a famous series of eight scenes from the legend of Saint Anthony Abbot that included the Temptation of Saint Anthony by the Master of the Osservanza, also in the Yale University Art Gallery's collection (1871.57).