This drawing seems to fall into a group deriving from a copy of the executioner in Andrea del Sarto's fresco of the Execution of John the Baptist in the Chiostro dello Scalzo, Florence (S. 693; dated by Schiff to 1777). Another drawing from Fuseli's Roman years also shows an executioner seen from behind (S. 631). Other drawings of this group are S. 632-3 and 704. However, in view of the watermark these particular examples were presumably done after Fuseli's return to England. Some of the figures are shown wearing casques or some other kind of headgear, but none have the flat, enlarged ear of this drawing and the companion lot ... These studies of backs are reflected in anumber of pictures by Fuseli including, on a vast scale, the fiture of Satan addressing Beelgebub across the burning Lake Paradise Lost, I, 221-271, painted for his own Milton Gallery 1797-9 (S. 889), and on a miniscule scale, the fairy standing on Bottom's palm in the illustration to A Midsummer Night's Dream painted for Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery in the 1780s (S. 753: Tate Gallery; see also the drawing of Anubis drawn for William Blake's engraving in Erasmus Darwin's The Botanic Garden, 1791, (S. 1038)