The scene represents the sentencing to death of St. John Nepomucene in 1393 for refusing to violate the secret of the confession of Queen Joanna. The painting originally hung in the convent church of the Barefoot Trinitarians in Barcelona, known as Nostra Senyora de la Bonanova, on the site of the present-day Liceu opera house. De Matteis was a Neapolitan baroque painter who worked for various European courts, and the Barcelona origin of the work attests to the international circulation of artworks in the period and the involvement of the city in this trade.