The composition of the present drawing, representing a seated Venus drying her foot after the bath in front of an armed Cupid, is closely related to a reduced and reversed engraving, tentatively attributed to Agostino Veneziano (c.1490-c.1540), based on the prime version of the composition engraved in around 1516 by Marcantonio Raimondi (1480-1534).
1 Although this composition has in the past generally been associated with a lost panel in the decoration of a room known as 'La Stufetta', in the apartment of the Cardinal Bibbiena of the Palazzo Apostolico in the Vatican, this cannot be proved. Paul Joannides has kindly suggested instead that this composition could be after a lost painting by Raphael, or a member of his school, or might even record a lost preparatory study for such a painting, perhaps from a few years earlier than 1516.
1. See G. Bernini Pezzini, S. Massari, S. Prosperi Valenti Rodinò, Raphael invenit, Rome 1985, p. 63, nos. 1 and 3, both reproduced p. 353