This watercolour, signed bottom right: G. Gigante, is a study of an agave, a subject depicted by Giacinto Gigante and other painters of the Posillipo School on more than one occasion. For example, a drawing by Achille Vianelli depicting a study of agaves is to be found in the Ferrara-Dentice Collection in the Museo di San Martino, and the same museum also owns a watercolour by Gigante on the same theme.

The agave is shown here clinging to a rock, a long flower emerging from its almost totally parched leaves.

The watercolour testifies to the painter's fondness for the study of nature, en plen air landscape painting being one of the characteristics of artists active in the first half of the 19^th century. They generally took their palettes and sheets of paper or small pieces of canvas with them on country jaunts in an effort to capture the natural element from life. They would then take this work back to their workshops where they would use it to develop larger compositions. These "sketches" are all the more precious for the speed with which they were produced, thus revealing the individual painters' skill.