This head is close in type to other models used in 'The Angels of Creation' (1876), an oil painting now in the Fogg Museum, Harvard. Burne-Jones first experimented with metalpoint in the mid-1870s, and it reflected his profound interest in Quattrocento Italian drawing materials and techniques. He returned to metalpoint in the 1890s, by which time the revival of the technique was in full swing, producing a series of works in gold and silver on boldly-coloured papers. Burne-Jones appears to have prepared his paper himself. Payment records attest to Queen Alexandra buying a corpus of drawings by Burne-Jones in 1904. Though the provenance of the other Burne-Jones drawings in the Royal Collection is unknown, it does not seem likely that they would have belonged to Queen Victoria.