The drawing is one of a group based on reliefs and other works that Thorvaldsen so industriously sought out and copied during his early years in Rome. The model was a Roman relief that was in the Villa Albani until 1798 and is now in the Louvre in Paris, or perhaps it was a print of this relief. The motif is also known from Winckelmann’s Monumenti Antichi Inediti (1767). Winckelmann determined the figures in the ancient scene of sacrifice. As in the case of many other early drawings by Thorvaldsen, there is no corresponding relief.
