Govert Flinck moved from his early training under Lambert Jacobsz., in the Frisian capital of Leeuwarden, to the workshop of the dealer Hendrick van Uylenburgh, another fellow Mennonite. There he worked under the supervision of Rembrandt. The theme of this painting, the expansion of Jesus’s mission to embrace other peoples such as the Samaritans, would have found a market among the various Christian denominations in Amsterdam: Catholic, Reformed, Lutheran and Mennonite.