This drawing was first attributed to Vanni by Peter Anselm Riedl on comparison with three pen and ink drawings of Saint Cecilia and her husband, Saint Valeriano, crowned by an angel, all of which are in the Uffizi, Florence (P. Riedl, Disegni dei barocceschi Senesi, Florence, 1976, nos. 25-27). Dr Riedl dates the present drawing to circa 1595-1605, and proposed that it might have been a design for a gonfalone, a church banner.
Saint Blaise, bishop of Sebastea in Asia Minor, was martyred by having the skin torn from his body by an iron wool comb.