Matisse may have been inspired from several sources to model this, his first sculpture. In 1907 he painted Joie de Vivre and may have drawn inspiration from a similar classical source, or possibly from the faun and satyr heads in the antique sculpture collection of the Louvre. Curiously Michelangelo's first known sculpture is of the head of a faun and Matisse could have seen this in the Bargello during his trip to Italy in 1907, the date of this sculpture.