Study of Putti

This red chalk drawing depicts two winged cherubs floating among clouds—a motif drawn from Renaissance and Baroque art tradition. The artist demonstrates anatomical study through careful modeling of the figures' rounded forms and musculature. The composition shows two figures at different scales, the larger attending to the smaller, rendered with the soft sfumato technique characteristic of academic drawing practice. Such studies served as preparatory work for larger paintings or as finished works of instruction, teaching the principles of figure drawing to students within the atelier system that dominated 19th-century artistic training.