This drawing together with lots pp. 29, 28, 36, 30 and 55, form part of a group of similar works with a sheet in Basel (S. 667-8) and one in a private collection (S. 669); the sheet in Basel is inscribed 'Roma 1771'. All are in an elongated format and contain one or more more-or-less Michelangelesque figures, occasionally in groups; most of the figures or groups are signed in the distinctive spelling 'Fusili' and most are numbered (the recto and verso of S. 667-8 are numbered '31' to '34', and '35' and '36' respectively, while S.669 is unnumbered). Schiff (pp. 86-7, 100 and S. 667-8) suggests that these works may have been done as part of a cycle of figures from Dante's Divina Commedia, identifying certain of the figures as Romieu de Villeneuf, Karl Martell, Belasqua, etc; the idea would be something like Fuseli's drawing of Shakespearean subjects in a format derived from Michelangelo's frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, done, also in Rome, a few years later in 1777 (S. 475-7). But the newly discovered drawings are difficult to fit into such a scheme; in particular the mother and two children on p. 29, and the scene on the verso of p. 30, to say nothing of the caricature-like figures on the verso of p. 36, are difficult to recognize as illustrating Dante.

The sources of all but one of the figures on this drawing can be found in Michelangelo's frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, Rome. Following Fuseli's numbers, '24' is close to Josaphat in one of the lunettes, '26' is a paraphrase (Schiff's term, see S.1171-2) of the ignudi and the ancestors of Christ and '27' is taken from the Prophet Ezekiel. On the verso, '20' is based on Adam in the Creation of Eve, '21' on the Erythraean Sibyl, '22' on Adam in the Creation of Adam, and '23' on God the Father in the Creation of the Sun and the Moon