The vibrant and intense brown ink sketch of those two female figures, created by the sculptor from Parma Gaetano Callani, serves as a window on the both dynamic and mutable story behind the artistic commission from which this sheet derives: the sculptural decoration for the lower row of the big hall in the palace of the new Hapsburg court, later known as the Hall of Caryatids in the Milan Royal Palace.

[…] The drawing for the caryatids is, then, an unicum, both because no other preparatory drawings for this Milanese project are known and is a testament to his creative thought for a work pertinent to a very important commission, today unfortunately in major part lost if not in these very precious artistic traces.

Excerpt of the expertise by prof. Egle Radogna.