Scholars know little about this simple sketch, celebrating Giambattista Bodoni, an Italian printer who designed several modern typefaces in the late 1700s. It was probably taken from the pages of a notebook, as the top of the mount has been stamped with the numbers 16 and 3.
The drawing, which shows three different groups of figures gathered at a balcony, is a preparatory study for the artist's cartoon The Apotheosis of Giambattista Bodoni.