A photograph of a drawing described by Ruland (1876), who catalogued the Raphael Collection, as a study by Bernardino Luini then in the collection of the Academy in Milan, preparatory for one of the figures painted by Luini in the Monastero Maggiore in Milan. As Ruland noticed, Luini based his composition upon Raphael's figure of Poetry, one of the allegorical figures painted in the vault of the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican (see RCIN 852621 for a photograph of the painting).

From 1508 until his death in 1520, Raphael undertook the decoration of a number of spaces in the Vatican Palace for, first, Pope Julius II and, later, Leo X. The first of these commissions was for what was probably the Pope's private library, known as the Stanza della Segnatura. The major aspects of the decorative scheme of the room are as follows: personifications of Poetry, Theology, Jurisprudence and Philosophy in roundels on the vault, with four narrative scenes known as the School of Athens, the Parnassus, the Disputa and the Three Cardinal Virtues on the walls below. In the Royal Collection there is a preparatory drawing by Raphael for the allegorical figure of Poetry in the vault of the chamber (see RCIN 912734).