Willumsen first thought of creating the relief when he was at the Chicago World Fair in 1893, envisaging it as a decoration for a wall in one of the city's bars. He started working on it after returning to Paris the same year and continued its development over the next five or six years in Copenhagen. But it was only when he had received an official commission for the work in 1920 that he worked towards its completion, using a large plaster wall specially erected in his house in Stradagervej as a base. Willumsen supervised the selection and cutting of the variously coloured pieces of Carrara marble in Lazzarini's Italian workshop."The Great Relief", J.F. Willumsen Museum. Retrieved 8 February 2013.
