This is a preparatory drawing for the Final Competition of the Rome Scholarship, for which candidates were required to produce a ‘Decoration for the Lunette in the Library of the British School at Rome’. 

Sorrell chose as his subject People Seeking after Wisdom. While the Bible contains many references to the attainment of knowledge as a pre-requisite of enlightenment, the motif of blindfolded figures is equally reminiscent of the harrowing images of bandaged soldiers from the Great War, such as John Singer Sargent’s Gassed, 1919.