The Master of the Housebook is the leading exponent of a Netherlandish-influenced style of realism practised in the Middle Rhenish region in the later fifteenth century. Here this style is evidenced in the profoundly human depiction of the guards as they sleep or awaken, as well as in the anatomically correct execution of Jesus’ upper body and the solemnly silent background landscape with its enormous depth, seen in aerial perspective. The shimmering cloak of the foremost soldier moreover reveals the painter as a masterful colourist. The panel once served as the right wing of a retable presumably from Speyer Cathedral, the central panel of which is now in the Augustinian museum in Freiburg.