The drawing is a study for the head of one of the Gorgons crouching in terror in The Finding of Medusa in the Perseus series. It can be related to an entry of 1890 in Burne-Jones's autograph work-record in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge: 'after this I worked all summer at the Medusa part of the Perseus story'. The Perseus paintings were commissioned by Arthur Balfour in 1875 to decorate the music room in his London house, 4 Carlton Gardens, but remained unfinished at Burne-Jones's death twenty-three years later. The final versions, some finished and some not, are in the Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, while the gouache cartoons are in the Southampton Art Gallery