At the annual exhibition of the Istituto di Belle Arti in Siena in 1871, Aldi presented a Study of Draperies, identified as the Still Life with Fur and Lute on display here because it shows objects that were used in the classroom at the institute, depicted in earlier studies by his teacher Luigi Mussini and by other students.

Aldi’s skill in reproducing the different textures of the fabrics, fur, and wood fibers became a personal trait which made him an excellent painter of historical events and other episodes set in the past. Perhaps for this purpose, Aldi documented the interiors of the Palazzo Corsini alla Lungara in Rome before its sale in 1883 by Prince Tommaso Corsini to the Italian government; the drawing rooms with their rich baroque and rococo decorations could furnish authentic settings for seventeenth- and eighteenth-century subjects, whether historical, literary, or imagined, for him to envision and paint.