Using an SVG pattern would solve your problem.

&lt;svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
    width="200" height="200"&gt;
  &lt;defs&gt;
    &lt;pattern id="image" x="0" y="0" patternUnits="userSpaceOnUse" height="200" width="200"&gt;
        &lt;image x="0" y="0" width="200" height="200"
            xlink:href="http://cdn.sstatic.net/stackexchange/img/logos/so/so-logo.png"/&gt;
    &lt;/pattern&gt;
  &lt;/defs&gt;
  &lt;rect width="200" height="200" fill="url(#image)"/&gt;
  &lt;circle cx="100" cy="100" r="50"/&gt;
&lt;/svg&gt;


Fiddle available here.

I pulled the SVG above through the batik rasterizer, and it was correctly rasterized.

Update
As noted in the comments, you could just as well include the image directly in your SVG, without the use of a pattern.

&lt;svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
      width="200" height="200"&gt;
  &lt;image x="0" y="0" width="200" height="200"
      xlink:href="http://cdn.sstatic.net/stackexchange/img/logos/so/so-logo.png"/&gt;
  &lt;circle cx="100" cy="100" r="50"/&gt;
&lt;/svg&gt;


Fiddle available here.

Batik - put SVG on top of image
If you look at the full card list for Magic 2015, at Gatherer or elsewhere, you'll see a bunch of cards listed with collectors number 270-284. What are these cards, and why are they listed as being part of Magic 2015? I played enough M15 Limited to be pretty sure that they aren't actually present in packs, and they're listed after the basic lands, which is very unusual. Is there some secret, bonus release of M15 that had these extra cards?
