Magnificently ornate amphitheatre (scenery from the opera Lucio Vero). Based on the handwriting of the inscription on the back of this drawing, it has been attributed to the architect and set designer Francesco Galli Bibiena. The drawing arrived in Portugal in the luggage of his son, Giovanni Carlo, also an architect and set designer, who worked in Portugal from 1751/52 until his death in 1760. The opera Lucio Vero, with the libretto by Apostolo Zeno, was performed at the Teatro d’Alibert in Rome, at the 1719 Carnival, and was dedicated to Dona Teresa Borromei Albani.

In the spectacular drawings produced by the Galli-Bibiena family, particularly those relating to the scenery created for operas, the magnificence and fantasy of the different elements, together with the complex spatial relationships, planes and structures, are organised into an ephemeral world of architectural capricci, which were greatly appreciated in the baroque period.