A pen and ink drawing of a figure group in classical dress: a female figure in distress at the centre, her hand held by a man who raises his arm towards another man, a letter in his hand. Columns behind. Circumscribed with a pen line. Pencil inscription below: Troilus + Cressida. Watermark: 1781.

The subject of this drawing is taken from Roman legend as described by the 5th-century Latin writer Macrobius, and shows the moment when Octavia, the sister of the Emperor Augustus, faints in grief for her son Marcellus as she listens to Virgil reading his Aeneid. The drawing is a preparatory study for a painting now in the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, dated 1788. There are some differences with the final composition, but the classical column, chair on the left and poses and gestures are similar to the finished painting.

Angelica Kauffmann was a Swiss-born painter of portraits and genre paintings in a neo-classical style. Her early years were spent in Italy, Switzerland and Austria, and she was in England between 1766 and 1781, becoming one of two female founding members of the Royal Academy in 1768. She returned to Italy in 1781, becoming the most famous and successful painter in Rome after the death of Pompeo Batoni in 1787. Oppé (English Drawings in the Collection of HM The King, 1950) incorrectly identified the subject, based on the later inscription, as Troilus and Cressida. Another preparatory drawing on prepared paper is in the Städel Museum, Frankfurt (inv. no. 13611).