A very typical example of Francesco Vanni's draughtsmanship of the 1590s, this assured sheet of figure studies is executed with broad, confident strokes of black chalk, heightened with white chalk, on light blue paper, the whole dominated by a strong and clear desire to determine volumes, especially in the geometry of the drapery. The artist has evidently absorbed much of Barocci's style and grace, but elaborates these qualities into his own personal idiom.
The figures of the two kneeling young women, one studied twice on the right side of the sheet, cannot be directly connected with any known painting by Vanni, but very similar female figures can be found in The Miracle of the demonic girl, a fresco in the chapel of St Catherine in the church of St. Dominic, Siena, executed between 1593 and 1596.
For a later drawing by the artist, see lot 24.