Flemish School, circa 1600

Possibly François Desmarais (active 1729), Nantes;

Arthur Melville Champernowne (1871-1946), Totnes (L.153);

Henry Scipio Reitlinger (1882-1950), Maidenhead,

sale of his collection, London, Sotheby's, 23 June 1954, lot 792 (as Lambert Suavius);

Ian Woodner (1903-1990), New York,

by whose Estate sold, London, Christie’s, 2 July 1991, lot 183 (as Flemish-German School, circa 1580);

with Thomas le Claire, Kunsthandel, Hamburg (as Attributed to Johan König), by 1999,

where acquired by Diane A. Nixon

H.S. Reitlinger, Old Master Drawings. A Handbook for Amateurs and Collectors, London 1922, p. 134, pl. 25 (as Flemish, Middle of Sixteenth Century, with a tentative attribution to Lambert Suavius)

Stylistically intriguing, with its swiftly – and distinctively – drawn setting of an elaborate palace terrace and garden, combined with firmly delineated, sculptural foreground figures modelled in contrasting brown wash, the attribution of this drawing has proved challenging to scholars. Reitlinger wondered (see Literature) if it might be by the mid-16^th century Flemish master Lambert Suavius (c.1510-before 1576), one of the earlier northern artists to work in Rome, but little is known of his drawing style. The name of the Elsheimer disciple Johann König (1586-1642) was also previously proposed, but is not accepted by current scholars of that artist’s drawings.

Compositionally, the background architecture strongly reflects the prints of Hans Vredeman de Vries (1527-c.1607), whose extremely wide-ranging influence can be seen across much of the art produced not only in the low countries but also in Germany and France during the late sixteenth century. The figures, on the other hand, seem closer in style to drawings by the Antwerp draughtsman and printmaker Pieter de Jode I (1570-1634), such as his Elisha and the Miracle of the Widow’s Oil, in Rotterdam.¹

Since no other drawing in the same distinctive combination of techniques has so far been identified, the present work remains for now anonymous.

^1.Rotterdam, Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum, inv. MB 2009/T 2; see Bosch to Bloemaert, Early Netherlandish Drawings in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam,  exh. cat., Paris, Fondation Custodia, and Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, 2014-15, pp. 276-7, cat. no. 104