watermark: pascal lamb within a coat of arms, surmounted by a crown, above the letters WR; cf. Laurentius, I, no. 654 (1647)

…; first recorded in the museum in 1910¹¹Acquisitions register

Object number: RP-T-1910-57

Although the composition is similar to that of several of Salomon de Bray’s biblical paintings, the style differs from his other drawings in the extensive use of hatching. The distinctive signature and precise date, 22 August 1648, are in the same hand as the drawing, so there is no reason to call its authorship into question, as Moltke did. The description of forms with thin, light lines is a characteristic of De Bray, but here (and perhaps in other sheets that have not survived) he decided for some reason to use hatching for the shaded areas rather than wash.

The previous year, 1647, Salomon had made a drawing of Diana and her Nymphs Finding Endymion, now in the Special Collections in Leiden University Library (inv. no. PK-T-122),²²J.W. von Moltke, ‘Jan de Bray’, Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft 11/12 (1938-39), p. 403, no. Z.68. in which hatching also plays a role in the background foliage, while the leaves in the foreground are broadly similar to those in the Amsterdam sheet. Rather than giving cause to doubt its autograph nature, the technique of the Amsterdam drawing is the more remarkable for being so rare in Salomon’s oeuvre.

Peter Schatborn, 1998

J.W. von Moltke, ‘Jan de Bray’, Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft 11/12 (1938-39), p. 412, no. Fr.Z.3, fig. 96 (as doubtful); M. Schapelhouman and P. Schatborn, Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam: Artists Born between 1580 and 1600, 2 vols., coll. cat. Amsterdam 1998, no. 67