This recently discovered sheet is a rare work by Jean Cousin the Elder, one of the most original and appealing artists of the French Renaissance. He was active as a designer of tapestry, stained glass, and book illustrations, as well as of ephemeral festival decorations for the French court. Nonetheless, Cousin's oeuvre has proved difficult to reconstruct, as the majority of his designs are known only through the final products executed by skilled artisans in other media. This is one of a small number of firmly autograph sheets by his hand. It is connected to a set of eight tapestries (three survive) illustrating the life of Saint Mamas, commissioned in 1543 for the cathedral at Langres.

Saint Mamas was an obscure child martyr who lived in Cappadocia during the third century. He was born in prison to a mother who died just after his birth; his father had died just before it. A local widow, Amya, was instructed by a divine vision to petition the governor for permission to adopt the child and to give his parents a Christian burial. The lost tapestry for which this is a study presumably would have been the first in the series.