A study for the Allegory of Drawing now in the Pushkin Museum, Moscow, J.L. Bordeaux, François Le Moyne and his generation, Paris, 1984, no. 63, fig. 66. The picture, with its pendant the Allegory of Music in the Hermitage, was painted for the artist's friend, Jean-Baptiste Massé, one of the leading engravers of the 18th Century. Both pictures were described by the Comte de Caylus as: 'Le Génie du Dessin qui découvre la Vérité, et pour pendant celui de la Musique, l'un et l'autre peints pour M. Massé, son ami', Comte de Caylus, Vie de François Lemoine, in Vies d'artistes du XVIIIème siècle, Paris, 1910, p. 66. The shaped upper edge of the drawing suggests that the pictures were intended as wall decorations, to be inserted in boiseries. The pictures remained as a pair until 1923 when the J.B. Balachov collection entered the Hermitage. The compositions prefigure Boucher's success with similarly grouped children with allegorical meaning, such as L'Amour Oiseleur and L'Amour Moissonneur, A. Ananoff, François Boucher, Lausanne and Paris, 1976, I, nos. 62-3. Bordeaux suggests dating the pictures to around 1729, op. cit., p. 107, no. 63.
The composition of the drawing and that of the picture are very close though Le Moyne has added to the background of the latter a putto trying to unveil Truth and to the foreground an antique marble head instead of a capital. The poses of the putto in the lower left corner and that of the putto looking through a magnifying glass at a pearl necklace are also slightly different.