This drawing is the modello for a well-known painting by
Pordenone, now lost, that must have impressed critics and artists alike
through the virtuosity of its radically foreshortened figures and its
splendid sense of movement and energy. It spawned several copies,
Pordenone repeated sections of it for Venetian collectors, and
Tintoretto used it as inspiration for a painting of the same subject
(National Gallery of Art, Washington).
Pordenone's composition adapted elements from a tapestry cartoon of the
same subject by Raphael, which was displayed in the house of Cardinal
Domenico Grimani in Venice.