The tight handling of red chalk in the present drawing is characteristic of the artist, a painter who, although from a Bolognese family, worked mainly in Milan. This sheet is comparable with a drawing in the Louvre, which has a similar crowded frieze-like composition, N. Ward Neilson, Camillo Procaccini, Paintings and Drawings, New York, 1979, no. 290, illustrated.
The attribute of Saint Dorothy is an angel holding a basket of roses and apples, who appears on the right of the present drawing. Because Dorothy refused to renounce her Christianity, the Roman governor decided to put her to death. On the way to her execution a scribe called Theophilus asked her mockingly to send him a basket of roses and apples from Paradise. After she had been beheaded an angel appeared to the scribe and presented him with a basket of roses and apples, and he was immediately converted to Christianity