The grave marker was commissioned by the painter Viktor Barvitius, the younger brother of its architect Antonín Barvitius. Viktor studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and undertook several study trips abroad; his time in Paris was of particular importance. His portraits of various contemporaries can be seen as a social chronicle of Prague's high society of the era. Although he limited his painting activities after 1876, when he was named inspector of the Picture Gallery of the Society of Patriotic Friends of the Arts (the predecessor of the National Gallery Prague) and began teaching at the Academy, he remained active in the St. Luke Society, an organization for supporting the arts that he founded together with his brother. Financially secure, in January 1878 he married Gabriele (née Lechleitner), the widow of Hugo Haase von Wranau, an ennobled printer, publisher, and owner of a paper mill in Vrané nad Vltavou. Gabriele was a longtime family friend, as evidenced by Viktor's painting Pilgrimage at Hvězda (1861), where she is depicted alongside Barvitius's classmate Hynek Lechleitner. Viktor's involvement in the Haase company contributed to an increase in the quality of its products, in particular its wall calendars. When Gabriele died of tuberculosis in January 1886, Viktor's brother Antonín undertook the design of a new family crypt. The plans and budgets were drawn up in February. The costs were estimated at around 4,000 gulden, of which 2,370 to 3,500 gulden were budgeted for the stonework by Giovanni Ciani, an Italian active in Prague. Several different materials were considered (sandstone, Belgian granite, Carrara marble for the six pilasters in the Composite order; syenite for the inscription panels). The crypt's internal arrangement was similar to that of the older Rohlena family crypt, with the coffins placed on two levels on stone slabs (apparently made of Carrara marble). The architectural design and use of color contrast –⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ a broad, light-colored stele divided by pilasters and cordon ledges into dark fields for the inscriptions –⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠-reflects a synthesis of multiple stylistic influences, including the triumphal architecture of imperial Rome and Italian Renaissance grave monuments, all of which Barvitius would have encountered on his Italian sojourn. The plans were officially approved in May 1886, but construction was most probably not completed until the following year, when a contract was signed for the hundred-year lease of a first-class burial plot for the amount of 1,399 gulden and 86 kreuzer. Also buried in the crypt are Barvitius's mother Barbara, Alfred Haase von Wranau (Gabriele Barvitius's son from her first marriage), Viktor's daughter Isabella (who had married Julius Meder, an official at the Ringhoffer factory), and the government councilor Josef Ruth (the husband of Viktor's second daughter Helena).