Initially attributed to Sodom, it was recognized to Leonardo da Vinci by Adolfo Venturi, as a study for the head and half-length of the Leda with the swan, the famous lost subject of the Florentine master known from some ancient pictorial copies and original drawings. Some proposals have attempted to refer the drawing to the sphere of Cesare da Sesto or Gianpietrino and finally to Francesco Melzi, the most faithful disciple and heir of all Leonardo's manuscripts and drawings. The drawing, on red prepared paper, is an extraordinary graphic test made of red stone, the potential of which Leonardo first experienced, then transmitting it to his circle. The recent restoration of the drawing carried out by the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence has made the quality of the drafting more appreciable, highlighting stylistic methods typical of the Leonardo style such as the engraving marks, the hatching, the soft and homogeneous distribution of the nuance and the accurate intertwining hair on the woman's head.

It is one of the oldest drawings in the Sforza Castle Collection. Studies of five heads of young people, or rather of the same face reproduced five times in different attitudes and examined from different points of view, are gathered in the recto of the parchment. Described with great naturalness, the faces are taken from life, as early examples of "natural" portraits. On the same sheet, at the top and in the center, the head of a lamb is drawn, under which is written "agnius" and a sign interpreted as the monogram of the name of Christ or as the letter "P", presumed abbreviation of the term " pictor ". On the reverse of the parchment, another drawing represents two monks and a bent woman. The most accredited hypothesis recognizes the authorship of the sheet to Agnolo Gaddi, with a dating to the 1880s, due to the strong similarity of the male types with the figures that the artist frescoed in the choir of Santa Croce in Florence. The work was also compared to Ambrogio Lorenzetti, in particular to his frescoes in the basilica of San Francesco in Siena, thus anticipating its execution to the third or fourth decade of the century. Another interpretation suggests assigning the sheet to a Florentine artist active in 1420, belonging to the generation of Cennino Cennini who in his Treatise on Painting had emphasized the importance of "portraying the natural".

Before entering the civic collections of Milan in 1929, together with a sheet representing the same architectural project with some variations, the drawing was part of the collection of the architect Carlo Amati, who attributed it to Donato Bramante. Considered the elevation for an altar by Luigi Pungileoni and approached for the first time to the works of Bambaia by Giorgio Nicodemi, the structure depicted there is conceived as a triumphal arch: the central body, surmounted by a tympanum, houses two kneeling saints and in the center a fornix, laterally decorated with the figures of the Annunciation; the two lateral niches welcome the saints Ludovico da Tolosa and Antonio da Padova. A frieze with five episodes from the life of the Virgin decorates the upper part of the structure, surmounted by the figures of the Redeemer, two angels and the evangelists John and Matthew. The design was related to the construction of an altar for the church of Santa Maria del Giardino in Milan. In 1515 Bambaia actually participated in the competition announced for the execution of this work, in collaboration with Geronimo Della Porta and Cristoforo Lombardi, but the altar was then built for a lower price by other artists between 1519 and 1523. .

The drawing made in 1916 is a self-portrait, a theme on which Wildt dwells in crucial moments of his artistic activity. As in the one carved in marble in 1909, to which the drawing is closely linked, the artist's image is similar to a religious symbolism. In fact, in 1909 the shape of the face stands out on a background plate on which, in addition to the name and date, three crosses are engraved, to indicate the three troubled years of image processing and creative difficulty. The drawing of 1916, on the other hand, in addition to showing a more complete abandonment in the figure, which almost suggests a funeral portrait, sees the artist's head superimposed on an indefinite background on which, however, as the only legible elements, there are two crossed axes , easily interpreted as a cross, given the attitude of the figure. The design of the Civic Collections mediates the tragic expressiveness of the Nordic matrix, also mindful of the emotional charge of Gothic sculpture, with a translation of the figure in the marble, evident in the modeling of the volumes of the face (with the highlights that underline the stone quality) and in the typology of their simplification, as well as in the choice of leaving the white eye sockets below the lowered eyelids. The drawing alludes to the previous sculpted self-portrait, and, more generally, to Gothic, Michelangelo and Hellenistic sculpture. The sculpture of 1909, on the other hand, empty, as shown by the absence of the eyes, refers to ancient masks, in a game of models replicated in always different materials and types, but united by the subtle balance between tragic expressiveness and the coldness of the sign.

The work was sold to the Municipality of Milan in 1920, with the donation of Vittore Grubicy De Dragon. The collecting events related to watercolor are clarified by Grubicy himself in a long note pasted on the back of the painting, in which he explains how the work, sold to James States Forbes, is back in his hands. Displayed in the commemorative exhibition organized by Grubicy himself in 1878, together with Le page boudeur, the watercolor is assigned - together with the pendant - to 1877, while the handwritten note anticipates its dating to 1876. The subject refers to the favorite genre painting from Cremona and depicts a scene of everyday life of the upper classes, often portrayed by the artist. Four women wrapped in elegant and fluffy dresses are in fact caught in a light conversation in the garden. The models for the figures were the painter's wife, Carlotta Cagnoli, with the blue dress, and her sister-in-law Elisa (Lisetta) portrayed three times in different standing postures. The watercolor of the highest quality, also for the use of the technique refined by Cremona, in an alternation of areas of liquid and material application, up to points where the bare support emerges, resolves into an atmospheric blend of environment and subject in the light and color, thanks to the speed and detail of the notation.