A drawing of Ceres destroying agricultural implements, the ferryman Charon standing in his boat to the right; a burning(?) city beyond. 

The drawing is Vasari's study for the second of six tapestries on the story of Ceres, designed by Vasari c.1557 to be woven for the Sala di Cerere of the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, and now lost. According to Vasari's own description of the scene in his Ragionamenti, the composition depicts Ceres, in a rage following the loss of her daughter Proserpine, arriving at the river Styx and destroying all agricultural implements so that the earth will remain barren of crops until her daughter returns. The figure of Charon is a repetition of one of the apostles in Vasari's altarpiece of the Calling of Sts Peter and Andrew, painted 1551 and now in the Badia, Arezzo. See Florian Härb, The Drawings of Giorgio Vasari, 2015, no. 222.

Popham (in P&W) had earlier attributed the drawing to Jacopo Ligozzi on grounds of style; the correct identification was due to Alessandro Cecchi in E. Allegri and A. Cecchi, Palazzo Vecchio e i Medici. Guida Storica, 1980, p. 78.