The drawing comes from the album of studies of putti from the Beauchamp Collection which were numbered by a contemporary hand, the highest recorded in the series being 137. The purpose of the drawings is unknown, although as James Byam Shaw suggested they may have been drawn to display 'his virtuosity, like a pianist improvising on his instrument', J. Byam Shaw and G. Knox, The Robert Lehman Collection, Italian Eighteen-Century Drawings, New York, 1987, no. 27. Byam Shaw dated the drawings to after 1770, following Domenico's return from Spain