This small oil sketch has been confirmed as a work by Wilhelm Hensel (1794-1861) from Brandenburg, who trained at the Berlin Academy before working as a portrait draughtsman, illustrator and engraver. He went to Italy in 1825 but returned to Berlin in 1828, the year in which he married Fanny, sister of Felix Mendelssohn. He was made Professor of Historical Painting at the Berlin Academy and Court Painter at the Prussian court, with clientele drawn from the artistic and literary circles in which he moved. Queen Victoria first became acquainted with Hensel's work when he visited London in 1838; she wrote in her Journal at the time: 'Went to look at two very fine pictures by a German painter, called Hensel, which are really very fine. I saw the Painter himself' (RA QVJ: 18 August 1838). On his return to London in 1843, he presented Queen Victoria with his painting Miriam's Songs of Praise (408985; Royal Collection) and was given in return a diamond ring. A large body of his portrait drawings are known, including a drawing of Queen Victoria (914185; Royal Collection). The Princess Royal was not, however, an admirer of his work, reporting to Queen Victoria on 29 March 1858: 'Hensel showed his Album of unlike Portraits and People in impossible lights and Positions' (RA VIC/Z 5/44).

In this sketch, Hensel has depicted a scene from J. Wolfgang Goethe's play Torquato Tasso (1790) based upon the life of the Renaissance poet, who was patronised by the ducal family of Este at Ferrara but subject to fits of madness. It represents the moment in Act Two, Scene 1, when the poet recalls his first meeting with his love, Leonora d'Este, sister of Alfonso II, Duke of Ferrara. In the foreground Lucretia d'Este draws Tasso forward by the hand and presents her sister, Leonora d'Este, on the arms of her waiting women, to the young poet. Lucretia D'Este's arm, stretched out in a gesture of presentation, and her lateral glance at Tasso, link the poet and his love in a moment that is given a prescient sense of drama. This small oil sketch is not, however, known to relate to any large-scale version by Hensel.