The present drawing, first attributed to Charles de La Fosse by Peter Fuhring is comparable to drawings by the artist in the Louvre (inv. 27653), Musée des Arts Décoratifs (CD 2582 and CD 2586), Kunstbibliothek, Berlin (Hdz 3217 and Hdz 3229), Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (NM 2742, 2745 and 2747) and the drawings sold from the collection of A. Benois, Drouot, Paris, 16 November 1984, lots 56-8, one of which is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, J. Bean, 15th-18th Century French Drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1986, no. 143.
The reference to Minerva in the lunette on the verso relates to other known iconographic schemes involving Minerva imagery executed by La Fosse for Montagu House (1684-92) and Hôtel Crozat (1704-16). It is tempting to connect the drawing with the latter comission in view of the fact that the female figures in the present drawing are inspired by two ignudi by Cortona found in the ceiling project, formely in the Crozat collection, for the Villa Sacchetti, Rome, Le Cabinet d'un Grand Amateur P.-J. Mariette, Louvre, Paris, 1967, no. 103. The insertion ,however, of what appears to be the crown of a marquis suggests another patron, whom Fuhring tentatively identifies as the Marquis de Louvois. La Fosse worked for Louvois in the mid-1680s at his château in Meudon. Tessin's 1687 description of the decoration does not, however, include any mention of Minerva imagery