Like several others with the same motif, this drawing was made during the very last period in Thorvaldsen’s life – as was the same motif done in chalk on a large slate tablet on which he usually made clay models for his reliefs. From one composition to another, the aging sculptor focused sometimes on the figure of a young genius, and sometimes on the monumental head of Zeus from Otricoli, which he had got to know in the Museo Pio-Clemtino during his first years in Rome. Thorvaldsen often put his own features on the face of the genius.
