This is still in its original Roman frame. 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. Another drawing by Luti from this collection was sold in these Rooms, 2 July 1991, lot 115, illustrated in colour