This is the preparatory study for the figure on the right of Muziano's painting,
Messa di San Basilio, commissioned in 1582 for the Gregorian chapel in St. Peter's, Rome. Muziano's work on the painting was interrupted by the death of Pope Gregory XIII in 1585 and the painting was eventually finished by Cesare Nebbia. The painting, which disappeared in the 18th Century, is now only known through an engraving by Jacques Callot.
1
Another drawing, housed in the Uffizi, depicts the same figure leaning on the balustrade and must be a later study as the man is drawn with his garments on and there is a subsidiary figure at the side.2
1. Tosini, op.cit., p. 227, fig. 211
2. Op.cit., fig. 212