The ceiling decoration of the third camerino of the Casino (or Palazzetto) Farnese included, in the centre, an allegorical figure of Night, surrounded by the four paintings of winged putti, described by Bellori as ‘giuochi di Amoretti coloriti di giallo’. With the demolition of the Casino later in the 17th century, the paintings were transferred in 1662 to the Palazzo del Giardino in Parma, the home of Ranuccio Farnese, Duke of Parma. Remaining in the possession of the Farnese family and their descendants until the 19th century, most of the surviving Casino paintings were acquired by the Duc d’Aumale in 1854 and entered the collections of the Musée Condé in 1870.

A related drawing by Annibale Carracci for one of the putti in the Chantilly paintings, executed in red chalk, is in the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland drawing shares much of the same English provenance as the present sheet, with which it was paired in the Reynolds, Mayor and Bellingham-Smith collections. Both drawings have born traditional attributions to Correggio, an artist of great importance to Annibale’s development as an artist and one of his main influences in the decoration of the Palazzo Farnese. (Indeed, many of Annibale’s chalk drawings have at one time or another been attributed to Correggio). A stylistic comparison may also be made with a red chalk study of winged putti in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which is a preparatory study for a corner of the decoration of the Galleria Farnese.