This study of a seated garzone was traditionally identified as a portrait of Michelangelo. As Ward points out, the figure is related to the soldier holding a shield on the left of the principal relief, The Meeting of Pope Leo X and King Francis I at Bologna in 1515, on the tomb of Pope Leo X in Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome, R. Ward, op. cit., 1988, figs. 21-2. The Holkham sheet evidently predates a compositional study in the Uffizi (R. Ward, op. cit., 1982, no. 44V) for the group at the left of the relief. This includes the figure studied in this drawing, although it shows him sitting on a block rather than a chair and holding a shield in his left hand.

Only twenty preparatory drawings survive for the two Medici Papal tombs of Leo X and Clement VII in Santa Maria sopra Minerva which Bandinelli completed in 1540. Ward suggests that preparatory studies such as the present one date from 1538 when Bandinelli is documented as being in Rome after having supervised the excavation of marble at Carrarra for the tombs.

The recently revealed verso is similar in handling to a study of a nude probably of the late 1530s in the British Museum, R. Ward, op. cit., 1988, no. 34, illustrated.

The verso is illustrated at the end of the catalogue