This is a fragment of a full-size preparatory cartoon for a tapestry that forms part of the so-called ‘Scuola Nuova’ series in the Vatican, dating from the early 1520s. The cartoons were probably executed by one of Giulio’s assistants in Brussels, where the tapestries themselves were made. The scene of the Massacre of the Innocents in this series is spread over three separate tapestry panels. Numerous other fragments from the cartoons for these survive, at Christ Church and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, and at the British Museum and the Foundling Hospital in London.