This work was registered with the number 227 in the 1794 inventory of paintings at the country estate of the Duke of el Arco (a part of the testament of Charles III), where it was identified as a portrait of painter Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo. The 1920 painting catalog of the Museo del Prado lists it, instead, as a self-portrait by Esteban March but the inclusion in Dibujos españoles (1930, vol. III, pl. CCLV) of a drawing from the Fernández Durán Collection made it necessary to discard that idea. The drawing includes a period inscription that identifies it as a portrait of painter Esteban March and his son, Miguel, and their facial features differ considerably from those in the present painting. Roberto Longhi proposed the current identification on the basis of a portrait of Borgianni at the Accademia di San Luca in Rome, and since then, it has also been suggested, not without merit, that it may be a self-portrait by Luis Tristán, an artist who evidently know Borgianni and whose works sometimes closely resembled his.

Museo Nacional del Prado, Catálogo de las pinturas, Madrid, Museo del Prado, 1985, p.64