This two-sided sheet is part of a group of spirited studies of horses made during Callot's sojourn (ca. 1612–21) at the Medici court in Florence. Youthful works, they take their inspiration from a series of etchings by Antonio Tempesta, Cavalli di differenti paesi, published in Rome in 1590. Unlike the majority of Callot's extant drawings, they were not directly preparatory for prints but presumably remained in the artist's studio as a resource for his later work.

The subject matter of Callot's vast corpus of prints was far-ranging, offering a view into life in the seventeenth-century duchy of Lorraine—from the pomp of court pageants to the miseries of war. Depictions of horses were central to images of both celebrations and battles. Callot's studies explore not only equine anatomy but also the potential of drawing to imbue a two-dimensional image with a living, breathing vitality—a remarkable achievement when one realizes that he worked not from life but from the more static medium of prints. Exploiting the speed of the pen and the organic swelling and tapering of the ink line, Callot created an effective analogy to the power and grace of this majestic animal, so important to seventeenth-century life.