This is one of several surviving studies (another is RCIN 990564) for a painting in an American private collection, recorded in the posthumous inventory of the Cavaliere Francesco Baiardo, Parmigianino's patron, as 'a picture of a nude woman who crowns a horse, with a putto beside them, sketched in colour and finished, 20 oncie high by 12 oncie wide, by the hand of Parmigianino.'

The identification of the subject as the seduction of Philyra, one of the Oceanides, by Saturn in the guise of a horse (which resulted in the birth of the centaur Chiron) cannot be shown to be contemporary with the painting, and was first given in an engraving of the painting by Bernard Lépicié (1698-1755). In all other sixteenth-century representations of the subject, and in the most prominent literary source, Hyginus’s Fables (no. 138), the horse is not winged. However Saturn is often shown winged when in human form, and Popham’s consequent explanation of his wings here as an attribute of Saturn may well be correct (A.E. Popham, Catalogue of the Drawings of Parmigianino, 1971, no. 654).

Though carefully executed, the drawing is some way from the final composition, lacking most notably the beautiful twist of Philyra’s body (which is seen in 990564), and the figure of Cupid, whose introduction may have been a device to avoid misidentification of the subject as a Muse crowning Pegasus on Parnassus (Popham's original identification, Popham 1949, no. 586). Only one of the studies for the project includes Cupid, on the reverse of a study at Chatsworth for the Steccata, which probably dates the painting to around 1534.

On the verso of the sheet is the figure of the woman in reverse, traced through from the recto.

According to Popham (1949), the drawing was etched in reverse, perhaps by Lucas Vorsterman (impression not traced), and thus when the drawing was in the collection of the Earl of Arundel, c.1630-40. It was also etched by Conrad Martin Metz (Imitations of Drawings by Parmigianino in the Collection of His Majesty, 1789-90), and by a monogrammist LJ or JL, 1808 (impression in the British Museum, 1851,0308.1017).