One of the four drawings that were produced for the second class competition of the Accademia di San Luca in the year 1683 (theme: Roman soldiers kill Archimedes as he writes). The subject is quite rare in 17th-century painting, the best known example being a painting by Pier Francesco Mola, perhaps executed to commission for Christina of Sweden. The didactic intent, in keeping with academic dictates, inhibited all forms of pathos and merely produced a flat transposition of the concerned subject into image form.