Datable to the second trip to Rome when the artist resumed making copies after the Antique. The drawing later became a source of inspiration for the head of Brutus in Les licteurs rapportent à Brutus les corps de ses fils, painted in Paris in 1789. Granet's very brief spell in David's studio did not start before June 1794, when the artist is first mentioned along with the master in a project to embellish the Palais et Jardin National. The date on the drawing, the second year of the revolutionary calendar, covers the years 1793 and 1794. The gift of the drawing therefore represents a very early testimony of the friendship between the two artists.
The same bust appears in a drawing by François-André Vincent offered in these Rooms, 6 July 1982, lot 229.
The drawing will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of David's drawings prepared by Pierre Rosenberg and Louis-Antoine Prat.