 Several Attic or Argive sculptors have been speculatively suggested as the author of the lost original.The sculpture was known in the Giustiniani collection in Palazzo Giustiniani, Rome, from the early 1630s, the date of a drawing made for the antiquarian Cassiano dal Pozzo and was illustrated in the engraved catalogue of the Galleria Giustiniani, produced under the direction of Joachim von Sandrart in two deluxe volumes, 1635–36 and 1638 In its first appearance in a Giustiniani inventory, 1638, it was a ""vergine vestale vestita, di marmo greco tutta antica alta palmi 9"" (quoted by Lachenal), "a clothed Vestal Virgin, of Greek marble wholly antique, height 9 palmi.