This is one of a number of representations of hideously ugly old women by the same hand which may originally have formed series of the Three Fates (one of these is in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest; several others have appeared on the art market). These were formerly thought to be late sixteenth-century and to originate from the circle of Michelangelo, but it seems certain that they are considerably later, probably from the early eighteenth century. Several scholars have suggested a tentative attribution to Montauti, who was active in Florence and later in Rome; he began as a medallist and bronze sculptor, and seems only to have turned his hand to marble for a relatively short period from the mid-1720s.