The elongated proportions and the position of the figure of Clio derive from the antique sculpture of the Sleeping Cleopatra in the Vatican. Gramaccini relates the treatment of the face to Moitte's statue of Charity on the funerary monument of 1787 in Saint Gervais, Paris. She identifies the putto on the left of this drawing as Thanatos, genius of death, leaning on a shield decorated with the triangle of light and the all-seeing eye of God. These details, together with the shadowy relief-like treatment, led Gramaccini to propose that the present drawing is related to a funerary project