Traditionally placed in the collection as Michelangelo. This identification of the drawing seems to go back as far as the eighteenth century, when the Martelli family of Florence apparently kept it together with their drawings by Michelangelo and his circle. According to the old Martelli inventory numbers, a sheet of red chalk studies attributed to Michelangelo ´s pupil Antonio Mini was kept as the immediately preceding drawing to the present one when in that collection.

Small thought this study may be, in my opinion it is indeed compatible with the early style of Parmigianino, and for this reason it is here placed under Parmigianino´s name. If indeed the work of Parmigianino, the Prado drawing would have been made at the very beginning of the artist´s career, while the influence of Correggio (c. 1489-1534) was still strong. A red chalk drawing by Parmigianino after Correggio in the Ashmolean offers a particularly good comparison in support of the present attribution (inv. no. KTP 330).

Turner, Nicholas, From Michelangelo to Annibale Carracci. A century of Italian drawings from the Prado, Chicago, Art Services International, 2008, p.332