This is one of a series of four oil sketches, formerly with the Goudstikker Gallery, some of which that relate to pictures at Kingston Lacy, Dorset, and in the Sala dell'Avogaria in the Doge's Palace, Venice. The composition of the present drawing appears in several similarly squared drawings in Domenico's sketchbook in the British Museum (Tietze and Tietze-Conrat, op. cit., nos. 1526, 1528-33), in the Museo Civico, Trieste (op. cit., no. 1551) and formerly in the Koenigs collection, A.J. Elen, The missing Old Master Drawings from the Frans Koenigs Collection claimed by the State of Nederlands, The Hague, 1989, no. 389, illustrated.
This composition must have been very successful, judging by the number of versions, and also by its description in the Life of Domenico Tintoretto in Carlo Ridolfi's Maraviglie dell'Arte first published in 1648: 'Formò da Lucretio e dal Marino la vita humana, accompagnata dalle molte miserie, sedente sopra una culla, e con un piede su l'orlo del Sepolcro'. The drawing, according to Malvasia, is an illustration of one of Giovanni Battista Marino's verses 'Da la cuna à la tombà è un breve passo' [A short step separates the cradle from the tomb], Maraviglie dell'Arte, Roma, 1965, II, p. 262.