Hunt's painting Rienzi, for which the verso of the present drawing is a preliminary compositional study, was painted in 1848-9 and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1849, number 324. Hunt took the subject of Rienzi from Bulwer Lytton's Rienzi, The Last of the Tribunes, published in 1835. The finished picture more or less corresponds to the verso of the present drawing except in the pose of the young knight who attends the figure of Rienzi. The painting is now in a private collection, England.
The artist, and thence by descent to: Mrs Elizabeth Burt Sotheby's 10 October 1985
On loan to Ashmolean Museum 1965-1985 Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, 1969
Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, London, Victoria and Albert Museum, William Holman Hunt, 1969, number 101 Judith Bronkhurst, William Holman Hunt, A Catalogue Raisonné, Volume II, number D25, illustrated page 17, Yale University Press New Haven and London, 2006