The 1837 AB inventory of Soane's collection states that this relief was executed by Flaxman 'whilst perusing his studies in Italy', which would date it to between 1787 and 1794. Soane's 1835 Description refers to it as having been 'arranged and modelled from the antique'. There is a similar panel in the Flaxman collection at University College, London (Ely, p.15).

This subject, with its nine figures of men and women feasting, dancing or playing musical instruments was the model for the chimneypiece frieze for the Dining Room at the Grange, Hampshire (designed by the architect Charles Robert Cockerell in around 1822). Cockerell designed the lintel, on which Alexander Baring, his client at The Grange, refused to spend more than £150. Cockerell sent a pupil to consult Flaxman as to what the cost would be for the frieze, to which the scuptor replied that it would 'cost all that money'. Cockerell described the source of the design as his own, explaining, 'I have attempted (though very lamely) a sketch from Millingen's vases¹ and some tracings of mine in Italy'. The design was also used for another fireplace at Buckingham Palace.

In 2012 this sculpture was reinstated in its original position on the west wall in the recreated Tivoli Recess as part of Phase 2 of the Opening up the Soane restoration project. Taylor Pearce Restoration cast a section of ribbon ornament from another example in the Museum in order to reinstate the original decorative moulding around this relief, lost when it was moved in 1918.

¹ Millingen (James V.) (1774-1845), Peintures antiques et inédites de vases grecs, tirées de diverses collections, avec des explications, par J.V. Millingen, Rome, Imprimé Par [Mariano] De Romanis, 1813. An important catalogue of vases belonging to the author or in private collections, including that of Carolina Murat, queen of Naples.

Sir John Soane, Description of the house and museum on the north side of Lincoln's Inn Fields, the residence of Sir John Soane, 1835, p.83.
Talfourd Ely, Catalogue of the Works of Art in the Flaxman Gallery, University College London, 1900, p.15 [for similar panel at UCL]
W.G. Constable, John Flaxman 1755-1826, 1927, p.85
Helen Dorey ‘Soane and Flaxman’ in Flaxman: Master of the Purest Line, Exhibition Catalogue, Sir John Soane’s Museum 2003
Richard Osborne, The Grange Hampshire, 2012, p.78-79 (ill.p.79)