In the 1580s Ludovico Carracci and his cousins, Agostino and Annibale, established an academy in Bologna that insisted on drawing from the life as the foundation of artistic practice. This is a study for a fresco in the Sala d’Eneide of Palazzo Fava in Bologna, painted jointly by the Carracci, and depicts a companion of Aeneas crushing a harpy. The use of sticky oiled charcoal led Ludovico to simplify the form of the powerfully built figure.