The originals of the 50 pictures of the Painted Life are now in Munich, Germany. There is no documentary evidence of when or where they were painted, by whom, exactly who commissioned them, and why these particular scenes were chosen. Tradition says that they were painted in the second half of the seventeenth century, using information from Mary Ward's own writings and from the memories of her first companions, the last of whom, Mary Poyntz, probably commissioned them after she became General Superior in 1654.