This drawing has been known under a number of titles but the subject seems certain: figures emerge from the ground below while an angel blowing a tumpet descends from above. The lower part of the drawing is analogons but not directly related to the lower part of the frontispiece to G.A. Burger's Leonora, engraved by Perry after Blake and published in 1796 (repr. David Bindman, The Complete Graphic Works of William Blake, 1978, no. 380), again with figures emerging from the ground, and to that of the engraving by Blake after his own design on page 54 of Edward Young's Night Thoughts, published in 1797 (repr. Bindman, op. cit., no. 363), where the figures are swept along in water in the 'vale of death'. This drawing, however, seems to date from some ten to fifteen years earlier.

The drawing comes from a large group remaining in Blake's studio at his death. They passed to his widow and thence to Frederick Tatham, with whom she was living as housekeeper at the time of her death in 1831. They all bear similar inscriptions stating that Blake's authorship is 'vouched by' Tatham, and most were dispersed at the anonymous sale of his collection at Sotheby's on 29th April 1862