The present lot is closely related to an allegorical drawing of December in a series of months from a group of comparable drawings, also including the seasons and historical scenes, at Windsor Castle, C. White and C. Crawley, The Dutch and Flemish Drawings of the Fifteenth to the early Nineteenth Centuries in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, Cambridge, 1994, pp. 108-18, no. 183, illustrated. Two more drawings from this group are in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York (F. Stampfle, Netherlandish Drawings of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries and Flemish Drawings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York/Princeton, 1991, nos. 16-7). The series are very probably designs for tapestries, possibly for the Medici family, and could be by an artist in the circle of Stradanus, who was active as a designer of tapestries for the Fabbrica degli Arazzi in Florence founded by Cosimo de' Medici. All drawings have decorative borders, while the actual subject is almost exactly the same size as that of the present lot. The Windsor drawing lacks many details seen in the present lot, and may therefore be a later version. In the present drawing the background shows more figures and differences in the architecture, while also in the foreground minor differences can be noted. The composition and subject may also be compared to those of a series of prints which are now regarded as based on designs by Jan Swart van Groningen (circa 1500-after 1558), M. Mauquoy-Hendrickx, Les Estampes des Wierix conservées au Cabinet des Estampes de la Bibliothèque Royale Albert I-er, Brussels, 1979, III, 1, illustrated pp. 364-6.