Vitzthum suggested, in his 1963 Master Drawings review of Briganti's monograph on the artist, that this drawing was an 'early project for the Galleria Pamphili'. The frescoes of scenes from the Aeneid were commissioned by Pope Innocent XIII for Palazzo Doria Pamphili, and painted between 1651 and 1654. Although the present drawing differs both in shape and composition from the central compartment of The Apotheosis of Aeneas, the focus of the composition with Jupiter looking towards a goddess who gestures to her right, and Hercules at the far right turning towards them is comparable with the fresco. The rapid pentimenti, sharp profiles, shadowed eyes and the delicately modulated wash in this drawing make it similar to a study at Windsor of The Death of Turnus, for one of the oblong compartments in the gallery, A. Blunt and H.L. Cooke, The Roman Drawings of the XVII and XVIII Centuries in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, London, 1960, no. 605, pl. 21.

Professor Merz, on the basis of a photograph, kindly confirms the traditional attribution to Pietro da Cortona. Nicholas Turner attributed this drawing to Cortona's most gifted pupil, Ciro Ferri