Partially disbanded notebook bound in red cloth-covered boards 260 x 185mm originally containing 80 pages of off-white medium-weight wove paper 254 x 176mm in ten signatures of eight plus front and rear endpapers. The spine bears a strip of masking tape inscribed by the artist in ballpoint pen NEARLY EMPTY; Brera; the inside front cover is dated in ballpoint pen April 1970 and the rear endpaper in pencil December 1974. The front endpaper and pp.1-71 are missing or blank. The drawings on pp.[72, 73] and [80] remain bound; those on pp.[74-79] and the rear endpaper are replaced in order and are followed by two further pages thought to be from the front of the book. All the pages are unnumbered.

In 1974 Franco Russoli, Director of the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, asked ten artists to choose a work of art from the Brera and present their interpretation of it to the gallery. Moore considered paintings by Crivelli, Tintoretto, Signorelli and Giovanni Bellini, finally settling upon Bellini's Pietà, see HMF 75(12)-75(18).