A drawing of the heads and shoulders of four grotesques; in the upper section is a female turned in profile to the right, confronted by a grotesque man with a fringe and a large chin. At lower left is a hunch-back old woman with a conical cap facing a caricature of Dante who wears a deformed, imbecilic grin.

Countless copies of Leonardo's grotesque heads survive, usually singly but occasionally lined up as here, and mostly derived from a sequence of carefully finished heads drawn by Leonardo around 1490. The couple below are a rare example of identifiable characters in Leonardo's grotesques: he is a parody of the standard likeness of Dante, grinning idiotically as he places his hand on the waist of his Beatrice.

The original of the head at upper right is now in the Kunsthalle, Hamburg. Other copies of the same head are in the Ambrosiana, Milan (inv. F263 inf. 19); in the 'Spencer Album', New York Public Library; and in a private collection, most recently at Christie's, London, 2 July 2019, lot 4.

The originals of the other three heads do not survive, but copies of all three are also in the Spencer Album; another copy of the old woman at upper left is in Montpelier, and another copy of Dante is at Chatsworth.