The composition of the present painting is based on the 'Head of a Cupid', oil on panel, 45 x 38 cm., in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, which is considered a study for the 1786 painting 'L'Innocence entrainee par l'Amour' in the Louvre. The Hermitage painting is evidently not a preparatory work for that painting but a tete d'expression executed after the finished work in the same year, 1786. The present painting may be identifable with a replica of the same size in the H.M. Heberle sale, H. Lempertz Sons, Cologne, June 7-8, 1886 (cf. I. S. Nemilova, The Hermitage, Catalogue of Western European Painting, French Paintings, Eighteenth Century, 1986, p. 121)

The frame...