Sylvie Béguin identified this drawing as a preparatory study for Nicolò's frescoed vault of the chapel of the Château of Fleury-en- Bière, executed after his arrival in France in 1552 and before 1558. The frescoes, now largely ruined, are recorded in engravings of 1646 by Antoine Garnier, the corresponding print to this drawing is illustrated in Correggio and His Legacy: Sixteenth-Century Emilian Drawings, fig. 81a. Other drawings related to the project are in the Louvre (5828, 5842, 5837 and 5843) and at Stockholm, P.Bjurström, French Drawings, Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Stockholm, 1976, no. 2, illustrated