The Haarlem guild of drapers commissioned Maarten van Heemskerck to paint two side panels for an older, existing altarpiece. On the left, he painted the shepherds worshipping the infant Jesus; on the right, the Three Magi. After the altar’s original centrepiece was lost around 1578, Cornelis van Haarlem was commissioned to paint a replacement centrepiece. He too depicted an episode in the Christmas story: the gruesome Massacre of the Innocents in Bethlehem.