Napoleon III gave this tapestry to the South Kensington Museum (as the Victoria & Albert Museum was then called) in recognition of the gracious welcome and assistance given by the officials of the Museum to the French Jury at the Universal Exhibition of 1862 in London. Laborious copying of paintings like Raphael's Holy Family, which this tapestry is after, formed a large part of the new work undertaken at the Gobelins tapestry manufactory in the nineteenth century.