A Seated Female Figure Holding Flowers in Right hand [Recto]; Crowned Figure Holding a Sceptre [Verso]

William Roscoe believed that the recto drawing was by the sixteenth-century Verona-born artist Giovanni Battista Zelotti (1526-1578), who worked alongside Paolo Veronese and Battista Franco decorating villas and palaces in Venice and the mainland. The attribution to Trotti was first made by the British art historian and former curator of prints and drawings at the British Museum, A E Popham (1883-1970). In 1997 Marco Tanzi suggested that it should be attributed to the circle of Trotti and by the same artist who drew a 'St John the Evangelist' in the Museo Civico in Cremona (inv. no. B.75). Many workshops such as Trotti’s used squared grids to accurately enlarge drawings. The designs could then be transferred to larger grids for paintings or frescoes. This work may have been used as a decoration on a fresco or added as a character in the background of a painting. Nude figures, such as this one, were often added to works for decorative, aesthetic and sensual purposes.