The prototype for the present composition is Peter Paul Rubens's painting of Caritas, now in the collection of the Counts of Schönborn, Pommersfelden.
Inscribed on the verso, at upper left, in blue ink, "10".; next to this, in red chalk, "4"; at center, in black chalk, "B"; at lower center, in an eighteenth-century(?) hand, in black ink, "Raphael"; numbered at lower right, in brown ink, "40s" ("s" in superscript); and at bottom center, unidentified collector's mark.
Watermark: Fleur-de-lis in shield, surmounted by crown, above 4 and letters "WR", (Strasbourg lily).
Rubens, Peter Paul, 1577-1640, Copy after.
Lely, Peter, Sir, 1618-1680, former owner.
Barnard, John, d. 1784, former owner.
Reynolds, Joshua, Sir, 1723-1792, former owner.
Fröhlich-Bume, L. (Lili), former owner.
Logan, Anne-Marie S., former owner.
Jane Shoaf Turner, with contributions by Felice Stampfle, Dutch Drawings in the Pierpont Morgan Library: Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries, New York, 2006, cat. no. 31.