The attribution to Pordenone was proposed by Roger Rearick. The drawing was most likely cut from the same sheet as a series of studies for a Holy Family composition that are in the Ambrosiana in Milan (C.E. Cohen, The drawings of Giovanni Antonio da Pordenone, Florence, 1980, p. 98, nos. 39-41). While not connected to a specific painted work by the artist, the study of legs on the verso bears some similarities to the central figure in his Crucifixion, 1520-2, in the Duomo, Cremona (C.E. Cohen, The art of Giovanni Antonio da Pordenone. Between dialect and language, Cambridge, 1996, no. 33, fig. 232).