The Death of Ananias, after a design by Raphael

In 1515 Pope Leo X commissioned from Raphael a set of huge preparatory paintings to serve as designs for tapestries in the Sistine Chapel. These paintings and tapestries became famous and were copied in drawings and prints by a number of European artists. One of these copies must have reached Mughal India, as had many European engravings and book illustrations perhaps brought by British diplomats or traders.

The Indian artist who created this painting chose to follow fairly closely some parts of the European model. At the same time, however, the artist transformed aspects of both style and content, exaggerating the complexity of the drapery, adding and subtracting figures, and changing the setting from an urban square to a rural hillside. The scholar Joachim K. Bautze has suggested that the Indian artist also reinterpreted the unfamiliar biblical subject in Hindu terms, making the apostles resemble Hindu holy men.