A Monarch presented with architectural Designs: Study for a Ceiling Compartment (recto); The Virgin interceding with Christ and a Saint for Saint Theresa and others (verso)

Domenico Gabbiani, Pietro Dandini, and Alessandro Gherardini, a pupil of Alessandro Rossi, were the most successful painters in early 18th century Florence. Gherardini executed many fresco decorations in churches, villas, and palaces in Florence and Tuscany. He is probably best known for his frescoes in the Palazzo Corsini in Florence, where he worked together with Gabbiani and Dandini between 1692 and 1700. He also worked for the Medici family and executed decorations at the Palazzi Orlandini and Giugni, Florence.
Drawings by Gherardini are relatively rare. A drawing similar in handling to the recto of the present one, related to the Palazzo Corsini frescoes, is at the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, A. Guicciardini Corsi Salviati, Affreschi di Palazzo Corsini a Firenze 1650-1700, Florence, 1989, pl. 42. Another sheet, preparatory for the lost fresco of The Martydom of Saint Cristina in the church of Santa Cristina, Pontremoli, is at the Louvre, F. Viatte and C. Monbeig Goguel, Dessins baroques florentins du musée du Louvre, exhib. cat., Paris, 1981, no. 137, illustrated.