The young girl stands wearing her hooded cloak, and carrying a basket. The source is the fairy story known through versions by Charles Perrault and others, 'Little Red Riding Hood'.
This figure was executed by Joseph Gott in Rome for one of his patrons, Lord Gower. Although sometimes terracotta (baked clay) is used for models for larger sculptures, in this case the statuette was probably intended as a work of art in its own right.

Gott (1786-1860) was an English sculptor. He trained in London between 1798 and 1802 under John Flaxman, and from 1805 at the Royal Academy Schools. In 1822 he moved permanently to Rome, where he and John Gibson were quickly getting a good reputation.‘ Gott returned regularly to England to meet his patrons and get commission from both the aristocracy and the industrial magnates of the North. All his finished works were carved in marble.
Friedmann comments that ‘Gott was never attracted by the austere neo-Greek style practised by Gibson and Richard James Wyatt: his sculpture is unheroic, pastoral, romantic.’ The period from 1822 to 1837 was his most productive, while later his work became less prominent even receiving hostile criticism.