Formerly attributed to La Bellange, this is one of 35 studies of heads which have been reattributed to Jean de Saint-Igny by Christopher Comer. The discovery of a similar head in a German private collection, bearing the signature of the artist, enabled Comer to establish that the present sheet was a preparatory drawing for Les Eléments de la Portraiture, a series of 38 engravings published around 1630 in Paris, A.P.F. Robert-Dumesnil, Le Peintre Graveur ..., Paris, 1835-71, VIII, p. 176, nos. 1-38