The attribution to Cerquozzi was first proposed by Kren, who points out the similarity between the character types and those in two other pictures formerly attributed to Jan Miel but regarded by him as the work of Cerquozzi, both in private collections in Rome, A Rehearsal of Characters in Costumes of the Commedia dell'Arte (D. Bodart, Les Peintres des Pays-Bas Méridionaux et de la Principauté de Liège à Rome au XVIIème Siècle, Brussels and Rome, 1970, II, fig.199; Kren, op. cit., p.191, no.D8) and A Merry Company with Masqueraders engraved as the work of Cerquozzi when in the Orléans Collection (ibid., pp.191-2, no.D9).

Comparison with self-portraits by Cerquozzi suggests that the depiction of the painter in the present picture may be intended to represent the artist himself. Two certain self-portraits are known, in A Painter at Work in his Studio in the Galleria Pallavicini, Rome, documented as such in 1773 (L. Laureati in G. Briganti, L. Trezzani and L. Laureati, The Bamboccianti, Rome, 1983, p.136, note 13, and p.190, fig.5.57) and, also in a subsidiary context, in a Portrait of a Man formerly on the Roman art market, identified as such by an early inscription (ibid., p.138, note 15, and p.132, fig.5.1);
a figure in the Kassel Conversation in a Garden (ibid., p.159, fig.5.21) has also been identified as a self-portrait