The traditional attribution of this head to Polidoro has never been questioned. It is probably drawn from the life, and thus less mannered than the figure studies from Polidoro's imagination. Gazing upwards with a slack jaw, the head could be for a saint in ecstasy. Such contextless drawings are more difficult to date than Polidoro's more substantial sheets, though the confidence of the details suggests that it is from later rather than earlier in his career.

L. Ravelli (Polidoro Caldara da Caravaggio, 1978, no. 172) compared its character to that of the head of St Thomas in the Courtauld Institute's Incredulity of St Thomas, but the motifs are only coincidentally similar.