The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts titled this work Renaissance Portrait when cataloguing Warhol’s drawings. The title may aptly describe the image, and pulls from a number of Warhol’s fixations: early sketches from the 1950s hint at an interest in Roman figures, and Warhol’s Renaissance Suite from 1984 proffers transformed images by da Vinci, Boticelli, and Uccello. The meaning of the word renaissance [re-birth] may have held special meaning for Warhol, who is said to have believed that being around beautiful people could transform one’s own beauty.   

Warhol’s interest in the Renaissance aside, further exploration reveals that this particular piece is a working study for a magazine illustration which was ultimately published in Woman's Home Companion in June 1956. The study drawing reveals the details of Warhol's final composition and evidences his early foray into the colors for the final drawing.