This painting was formerly attributed to Domenichino (1581–1641). The painting of a young woman wearing a turban and holding a small shell-shaped vessel intrigued art historians when it appeared at the Royal Academy in 1962. It was acquired as a depiction of a sibyl by the seventeenth-century Italian artist Domenichino, but when shown at the Royal Academy the subject was tentatively identified as Artemisia, who in mourning drank her husband's ashes, and the painting was reattributed to Domenichino's pupil Francesco Cozza. However, scholars have also attributed the painting to Simone Cantarini and described the subject both as Circe, the enchantress who turned Odysseus and his companions into pigs, and as Sophonisba, the Carthaginian princess who drank poison to escape capture by the Romans and humiliation as a war trophy in Rome.