Mantegna produced several grisailles in the last eleven years of his life; this style imitated relief sculpture and was then popular in the Mantuan court due to the duchy's lack of major sculptors and stone quarries. Possibly a fragment from a larger work, it was probably a commission by Isabella d'Este for her apartments and shows a sibyl in a crown and toga debating with a bearded Old Testament prophet who holds the scroll they are discussing.[2]
