During the second Punic War against the Carthaginians, the Roman general Scipio Africanus captured the Spanish city of New Carthage and was offered a beautiful maiden as one of the prizes of victory. Having heard that the girl was betrothed, Scipio, in a legendary act of restraint and decency, declined the prize and returned the girl to her fiancé. Pordenone shows an enthroned Scipio commanding his increduIous soldiers to release the girl to the deferential youth in the centre. Behind him are the girl's parents, who had brought gold as a ransom for their daughter (which explains the open treasure chest in the left foreground); this Scipio gave back to the youth as a wedding present. The story is recounted in Livy's History of Rome (26: 50).

This little-known drawing is a fine and characteristic example of a type of highly worked-up compositional drawing by Pordenone that has been termed — for obvious reasons a disegnofinito or highly finished drawing. Some of these are so precise that they have the appearance of copies or ricordi (accurate copies made after a finished painting), but the present sheet is relatively loose in its handling for a drawing of this kind, and includes a visible alteration to the position of the youth's head in the centre, and an alternative sketch for an arm at the right edge. No painting or fresco of the Continence of Scipio by Pordenone is known or recorded, but the theme would have been a very suitable one for a decoration celebrating a betrothal or a wedding.

If the drawing was indeed made as a preparatory modello for a painting, the intended location must have been high, for the very low viewpoint adopted for the drawing indicates that it was designed to be seen from well below. The drawing probably dates from about 1530—5, the period when the majority of the artist's drawings of this kind seem to have been made, notably in association with his extensive fresco cycle in the church of the Madonna di Campagna in Piacenza.

 The Edinburgh drawing has particular affinities with a sheet in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence representing the Rejection of Joachim 's Offering, which has been tentatively connected with the Piacenza cycle, and its composition is similar to that of a lost fresco of Pelias Persuading Jason to go in Search of the Golden Fleece, executed in 1533—4 on the garden façade of the Palazzo Doria in Genoa, which is known through two preparatory drawings and a drawn copy.