Kaufmann and others(1) have recognized that the recto of this drawing depicts the story of Hercules at the Crossroads and copies an engraving by Jan Muller after a design by Bartholomaeus Spranger. Jan Piet Filedt Kok further demonstrates that a red-chalk drawing highlighted with lead white now in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne, most likely served as the model for Muller's engraving.(2) He also notes that two proof impressions of the engraving were heavily reworked (or corrected) in pen and brown ink, grey wash, and lead white—closely corresponding to Spranger's drawing style and chosen media.(3)

Weyer's double-sided drawing is also executed in pen and wash with white highlights. It has been argued that this technique corresponds to chiaroscuro woodcuts popular at the time, and may have been used for drawings that would serve as models for prints, yet no extant prints have been found that relate to Weyer’s drawings.(4) Perhaps, the style and media chosen by Weyer had more to do with a stylistic affinity between his work and the artist he is copying—in this case Spranger. This makes sense if Weyer was in fact compiling these double-sided drawings into sketchbooks simply to collect and study important works of art.

Very little is known about the artist's life aside from his birth date of 1596. His father (d. 1621) and brother (1608-66), both named Hans, were active as portrait painters in Coburg. It remains unclear whether the Coburg Weyers were related to the Nuremberg artist Gabriel Weyer (1576–1632), who also worked in the Mannerist style of Dutch artists like Spranger. Hermann Weyer died around 1521.

While the source of the recto is widely accepted, the identity of the left-most figure of the central grouping has remained debatable. Kaufmann contends that Mars and Minerva are leading Hercules towards the virtuous path, whereas Lubomír Konečný believes the figure represents Virtue, and furthermore that Hercules' quest is symbolic of Rudolfine artists' desire for fame.(5) I believe that Konrad Oberhuber's identification of the individual as Bellona is correct.(6) The similarity of this figure with Spranger’s figure of Bellona in the painting Triumph of Wisdom (ca. 1595) is unmistakable.(7) Both wear Roman togas, helmets with feathers in the back, and carry swords. Although the figure could easily be either Mars or Bellona, it is widely accepted that the painted figure is Bellona.

Spranger's Triumph of Wisdom can also be connected to the verso of the Weyer drawing. Its composition is extremely similar to Spranger’s triangular arrangement of the figures in his Resurrection panel of the Nicholas Müller Epitaph (National Gallery, Prague).(8) The verso of Weyer’s drawing shows a comparable scene with Christ standing triumphant in contrapposto carrying a banner, and holding up his left hand to the heavens. These details, along with the soldiers being awakened and running from their revelation, are also evident in a preparatory sketch of the Resurrection by Hans von Aachen.(9) According to Karel van Mander, the von Aachen drawing was part of a collaborative project with Spranger.(10) It appears likely that it also inspired Spranger’s own conception of the scene of the Resurrection, which he used repeatedly on epitaph monuments.(11)

Weyer's drawing thus combines two very different kinds of imagery that in Rudolfine court imagery were in fact closely—the triumph of virtue/wisdom/art and Christ's triumph.