The Marriage of the Virgin has no biblical source but is found in the Golden Legend and the Apocryphal New testament. When Mary was to be married, suitors were called to the Temple and Joseph was chosen to be her husband. The story is the subject of a painting by Bartolome-Esteban Murillo (1617-1682). Like Murillo's painting, now in the Wallace Collection (P14), this work depicts the moment when the Virgin takes the hand of Joseph, as their marriage is blessed by the high priest of the temple of Jerusalem, Zachariah. As The Holy Spirit descends on the couple, Joseph's staff symbolically bursts into bloom, showing that he has been chosen by God. Behind the couple, one of the unsuccessful suitors breaks his staff in anger.

Murillo was one of the most admired and popular European artists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; while this painting may be a contemporary version after that by Murillo, it may have been painted much later.