In terms of style, subject and use of polychromy, the present pair of marble busts relate to similar works executed by French and Venetian sculptors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Voyages of discovery to the African continent, its subsequent colonization and the initiation of the slave trade, provided the Western world with new images of previously unknown races. Such images were powerful when depicted in art, whether it be the chained blackamoor supporting a console, or a full-length statue with its contrasting dark skin hue and vibrant coloured drapery of marble or wood.