Jakopič exhibited this painting in 1904 at Galerie Miethke and managed to place it for public purchase in 1910. The National Gallery of Slovenia acquired it from the Österreichische Galerie in Vienna in 1922. The painting is an offspring of the painter’s musing over symbolist images at the end of the 19th century. It stands out as a “study”, an unfinished work perhaps towards the lost On Lonely Paths or even for the figure of Christ for the grand St. Mark’s Gospel I/8, yet a painting in its own right important to the artists and recognized as such at the time. It contains all the aesthetic values defined in the 1890s within the perimeter of the Symbolist tendencies − a fragment, a nonfinito and the noble, the spiritual, the distinguished discovered within the quotidian. The golden glow of the halo gives the undistinguished and relatively young male figure the status of a prophet, a person with a mission.