A drawing of a woman, seated three-quarter length, half turned towards the left. She rests her forehead on her right hand and points at an open book with her left hand.

Etched in reverse by F. Bartolozzi (Boydell, I, 39; Calabi 2160). Guercino's original drawing was most recently at Sotheby's, New York, 26 Jan 2022, lot 20 (from the collection of William Esdaile, 1758-1837). 

The Italian engraver and draughtsman Francesco Bartolozzi met the Royal Librarian Richard Dalton in Italy in 1763, who was in Italy to find works to buy for George III's collection. Dalton persuaded him to come to England in 1764, where he was appointed Engraver to The King and became a founding member of the Royal Academy in 1768. Over the next forty years Bartolozzi was widely admired for the prints he made after drawings by Guercino, Holbein and Michelangelo in the Royal Collection, his engravings after his contemporaries Giovanni Battista Cipriani, Benjamin West and Angelika Kauffmann, and the prints he made for John Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery. He was also known as the leading exponent of the stipple manner technique, often using brown, red and ochre coloured inks.