The present drawing is clearly inspired by the work of Füssli both in the careful pen and ink hatching and the interest in physiognomy. Füssli's interest in physiognomy came from his friendship with Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741-1801) whose book on the subject was published in the late 1770s. The penwork of the present drawing is influenced by German Renaissance portrait drawings such as those by Baldung and Holbein. The hats of the figures at the top are clearly taken from 15th Century German and Netherlandish portraits. The deliberately anachronistic quality of the present study recalls the series of portrait drawings by the youthful Füssli of German humanists and reformers which, in the deliberately archaic technique and accuracy of the costumes, reflects his close study of northern Renaissance art, G. Schiff, Johann Heinrich Füssli, Zürich, 1973, II, figs. 142-91.
Füssli arrived in Rome in 1770 and remained there for eight years. His powerful personality and his imagination fired by the art of Antiquity and the High Renaissance, particularly Michelangelo, soon attracted the attention of other artists in the city. Füssli's circle included Scandinavian artists such as Sergel and Abilgaard, and a number of British painters like Runciman, Brown and Jeffreys who already knew of him from his years in England during the 1760s. The artist of the present drawing was probably not English. Both the references to northern art and the watermark point to a German or Swiss artist inspired by Füssli. Although it is not certain that this was drawn in Rome, the parallels with the bearded mathematician in the foreground and the figures at the left of Raphael's School of Athens would suggest that the artist was familiar with Italian Renaissance art. In addition, the motif of a scholar immersed in his studies was one that Füssli treated on a number of occasions during his Roman period, G. Schiff, op. cit., figs. 580, 676, 678, and 685