This is one of a number of drawings in the collection executed on pages from the same notebook with the watermark 'Joynson 1855.' Betty Elzea has identified the top sketch as a copy of a portrait of Titian in old age, most likely known by Sandys through an engraving. She suggests that the man below is a copy of a portrait of Michelangelo, also likely to be known by Sandys from an engraving. Elzea notes that 'both seem to have been used as references for the figures of those artists in the background of the caricature 'A Nightmare' (Frederick Sandys 1829-1904: A Catalogue Raisonné, pp. 144-5).