Arnold Nesselrath compared the recto of the present sheet to Giovanni da Udine's drawings at Windsor Castle (A.E. Popham, The Italian Drawings of the XV and XVI Centuries in the Collection of his Majesty the King at Windsor Castle, London, 1949, nos. 344-5) and at the Uffizi. Nesselrath points out that the sphinx on the verso was used for the fresco decoration of the Stufetta, the griffin for the Loggietta of Cardinal Bibbiena, and the winged swan in the Vatican Loggia. The latter is also present, though reversed, on a drawing in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, K.T. Parker, Catalogue of the Collection of Drawings in the Ashmolean Museum: Italian Drawings, London, 1956, no. 727, pl. CLXI. Nesselrath assigns the Krautheimer drawing to the artist's early Roman period, circa 1516-18.
The handling of the present drawing may be compared with that of drawings of animals and candelabra drawn in pen and ink, such as those illustrated in N. Dacos and C. Furlan, Giovanni da Udine, Udine, 1987, nos. 3, 12, 18-9.