 By 1556—fewer than sixty years after it was finished—Giorgio Vasari described the painting as reduced to a "muddle of blots" so deteriorated that the figures were unrecognizable.By the second half of the sixteenth century Gian Paolo Lomazzo stated that "the painting is all ruined".In 1652, a doorway was cut through the (then unrecognisable) painting, and later bricked up; this can still be seen as the irregular arch-shaped structure near the center base of the painting.