Alastair Laing kindly advanced the attribution and tentatively suggested the subject of the recto. He compared this with a drawing of Almsgiving to the blind Belasarius at Colnaghi's, New York, Old Master Drawings, 1987, no. 43, illustrated in colour. He suggested that the verso and a related study in a German private collection may be preliminary ideas for Deshays' tapestry Venus wounded by Diomedes, M. Sandoz, Jean-Baptiste Deshays, 1729-1765, Paris, 1977, no. 70-5 Cc, pl. VII