Girls in languid poses or asleep are a constantly recurrent motif in Rotari's repertoire of fancy heads. Like the previous lot, these also have a precedent in the work of Boucher, the Sleeping Girl which was the pendant to the prototype of the previous lot. Similarly lost, the original owned by Bergeret is only known through copies, see, for instance, Wildenstein, loc. cit., fig.24, and the Hermitage Sale at Lepke's in which a copy featured as lot 360 alongside the copy of the pendant. This was also engraved (captioned La Dormeuse), by Jean-Baptiste Michel, to form a pair with the engraving of La Voluptueuse, but in this case it is certain that Rotari drew his inspiration from one of the pastel or oil copies, as the engraver was not born until 1748 (see Jean-Richard, op. cit., pp.340-1, no.1419, illustrated). While a painting by Rotari at Peterhof (Polazzo, op. cit., fig.189) follows Boucher's model closely, showing the girl asleep with her head almost in profile, in the present work she is more frontal and captured as she dozes off or awakens. A similar moment of drowsiness is shown in a picture at Petrodvoretcs (ibid., fig.229)