This and the following lot are still in their original Roman frames. Edgar Peters Bowron wrote of similar pastels 'Luti produced intermittently throughout his career highly finished drawings and pastels for the trade. These fresh and luminous studies of heads and bust-length figures are historically significant as among the first of their kind to be created and appreciated strictly as independent works of art rather than as preparatory studies for a canvas or fresco', E.P. Bowron, Benedetto Luti's Pastels and Coloured Chalk Drawings, Apollo, June 1980, pp. 440-7