A drawing of the head of a young woman, looking up to the right. The drawing cannot be connected with any known painting by Reni.

V. Birke (Guido Reni: Zeichnungen, Vienna 1981, no. 67) suggested that the model may be the same woman depicted in an earlier engraving by Agostino Carracci (Bartsch XVIII, no. 35), a copy of which in the Albertina bears a pen inscription identifying the subject (there a girl) as the niece of Guido Reni. Apart from the similarity of the gaze, it seems impossible to connect these two works in any meaningful way.

The sheet has been stamped with the larger eight-pointed star associated with Nicholas Lanier (Lugt 2885). It is possible that Lanier acquired the drawing directly from the artist's studio in Bologna in 1626, when he was buying a painting from Reni for Charles I. According to Roger North, Lanier made the most of his overseas trips, and as well as securing artworks for his clients, he would 'at the same time agree to have a good parcel of waste paper drawings, that had been collected, but not much esteemed, for himself'. This practice may account for a number of contemporary drawings that bear such 'Lanier stars'.

The drawing has been discoloured by light exposure and water running down the sheet, and was presumably framed and hanging at an early point in its history.