A drawing of a large room with women working, open at the rear onto a view of a town. In the centre silkworm cocoons, kept in warm baths, are being unravelled and wound around winders; on the right a woman with a child carries a basket of cocoons, and in the background the cocooons are dried on the ground in a street with Renaissance architecture. This is a preparatory drawing for plate 6 of the series entitled Vermis Sericus. RCIN 904755, 904763-904766 are finished preparatory drawings for five of the six engravings in reverse, entitled Vermis Sericus. This is a history of the silkworm and silk-spinning, by Karel de Malle, published by Philip Galle, without date or place, and dedicated to Constantia Alamannia, wife of Raffaello de 'Medici in Florence.