On a visit to St Peter's in Rome in 1934, Manzù was greatly impressed by the sight of the Pope enthroned between two seated cardinals (which in turn recalled many youthful memories). He executed his first sculpture of a cardinal two years later, but it was a failure and was subsequently destroyed, and it was not until the summer of 1938 that he made the first surviving version, a figure 65cm high. Between then and 1959 he made more than fifty sculptures of cardinals, some seated, some standing, ranging in scale from small to over life-size. With the exception of a commissioned statue of the seated Cardinal Giacomo Lercaro completed in 1953, they were all conceived without a model and the faces were invented by him. According to John Rewald, on whose account this note is based, the artist always stressed that the theme had no religious significance for him and that he treated the figures just as he would have done still life.As is Manzù's usual practice, the present work is a unique cast and the plaster has been destroyed.