Called at the beginning of the 19th century “Les grandes têtes d'hommes coëffées à l'Orientale”, these compositions document the attention paid by the Genoese painter to the engravings of Rembrandt van Rijn, which he studied in Rome during a stay in the 1730s.

These are works that arise from a profound reflection by the author on the images engraved by the Dutch master, starting from his numerous self-portraits up to the series of male busts dressed in oriental clothes, made according to a fashion that achieved considerable success in Amsterdam, where these imaginative portraits, known with the term tronie , they were widely disseminated.

The series was donated to the Galleria Nazionale della Liguria in memory of the art historian and teacher Anna De Floriani.