Many of the commissions that he did receive would require Christian stories for display in wealthy institutions. They allowed him a certain level of autonomy, so long as the content was produced faithfully and respectfully. It became hard for the artist to make use of his skills in landscape painting and he would simply have to accept things as they were before getting an opportunity to do precisely as he wished at a later date.
Art history is full to the brim of similar examples to that where artists have struggled to find a balance between exploring their creative ideas freely but also managing to finance their daily lives too. Etchings were used by some Renaissance artists, including Albrecht Altdorfer, in order to quickly cover the financial necessities of life through large scale reproductions that could be sold on cheaply and in great numbers.
The yellow sky is very unusual for this artist, where normally he would prefer a more positive blue sky. Perhaps he deemed that inappropriate for what is such a powerful but unfortunate scene. He plies the scene with many figures who had to the energy and desperation of the scene, a topic used so frequently during the Renaissance and also Baroque art movements.
