Watermark: None

Surface dirt left centre, some stains

…; sale, Freiherr Max von Eelking (1813-78, Meiningen), Cologne (J.M. Heberle), 3 June 1902 sqq., no. 143, as Rembrandt, DM 700, to Johannes Christian Magnus Rump (1861-1932), Copenhagen (L. 3401);¹¹Copy RKD. his sale, Berlin (Amsler and Ruthardt), 25 May 1908 sqq., no. 419, as Rembrandt, DM 620, to Johan II, Prince of Liechtenstein (1840-1929), Vaduz;²²Copy RKD. by descent to his grandnephew, Franz Josef II, Prince of Liechtenstein (1909-89), Vaduz;³³According to L. 4398. from whom, as manner of Rembrandt, fl. 500, through the mediation of the dealer W. Feilchenfeldt, to the museum (L. 2228), 1948

Object number: RP-T-1948-407

Rembrandt, Drost’s model and teacher in the early 1650s, made various etchings of St Jerome, one of the four Latin Doctors of the Church and the author of the Vulgate, the official Latin translation of the Bible. For the present drawing’s composition, Drost may have taken Rembrandt’s etching of 1642 as his example (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-185),⁷⁷New Hollstein: Rembrandt, no. 212. which shows Jerome seated in his study. Drost mirrored Rembrandt’s composition and depicted Jerome without his standard attributes, a lion and a cardinal’s hat. The crucifix on the table, resting against a skull, refers to the time he retreated to the desert to repent his sins. It is in that capacity, praying with a crucifix in his hand, that Drost rendered him in another drawing, now in the Louvre, Paris (inv. no. 22998).⁸⁸Sumowski, Drawings, III (1980), no. 550x.

Drost’s characteristic parallel hatching is more pronounced than usual, which gives the drawing a rather overworked look. The dramatic illumination formed by the long strokes of hatching on the wall at the right and the blank wall at the left is probably an imitation of the chiaroscuro effect in Rembrandt’s etching. In another drawing attributed to Drost, Joseph Waiting on his Fellow Prisoners in the British Museum, London (inv. no. 1855,1013.39),⁹⁹M. Royalton-Kisch, Catalogue of Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the British Museum, coll. cat. London 2010, no. 3 (as Willem Drost). the artist used the same dense parallel hatching to suggest the darkness of the prison cell. Both drawings were previously attributed to Rembrandt, but are now given to Drost on the basis of stylistic criteria. Drost was not as adept at characterizing figures as Rembrandt. As a consequence, he created a limited number of types, all drawn in the same way, with pointed noses and crisp features. Jerome’s face in the present drawing betrays the hand of Drost and can be compared with other figures by him, as, for example, in other drawings by the artist in the Rijksmuseum, Joseph Threatened by his Brothers, Girl Leaning on the Bottom Half of a Dutch Door and Sketches of her Head, and Two Seated Old Men, One with a Globe (inv. nos. RP-T-1930-4, RP-T-1930-50 and RP-T-1897-A-3477). Schatborn placed the present sheet in a group of drawings that he considered later works by Drost, which show more convident penwork and a more systematical use of the parallel hatching.¹⁰¹⁰P. Schatborn, ‘Tekeningen van Rembrandts leerlingen’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 33 (1985), no. 2, pp. 101-02.

Bonny van Sighem, 2000/Marleen Ram, 2019

J.Q. van Regteren Altena, ‘Tekeningen van Rembrandt’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 1 (1953), nos. 3/4, pp. 55-56, fig. 3; Tentoonstelling van aanwinsten uit de verzameling van de Vorst van Liechtenstein, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1953, no. 73 (as Rembrandt); C. Nordenfalk, B. Dahlbäck and P. Bjurström, Rembrandt, exh. cat. Stockholm (Nationalmuseum) 1956, no. 118 (as Rembrandt); K.G. Boon and I.Q. van Regeteren Altena, Rembrandt: Tentoonstelling ter herdenking van de geboorte van Rembrandt op 15 juli 1606: Schilderijen, Etsen, Tekeningen, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Rotterdam (Museum Boymans) 1956, p. 26, under no. 50 (as Rembrandt); W. Sumowski, ‘Bemerkungen zu Otto Benesch, “Corpus der Rembrandt-Zeichnungen” I’, Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin 6 (1956-57), no. 4, pp. 229, 242-43 (as pupil of Rembrandt); W. Sumowski, Bemerkungen zu Otto Beneschs “Corpus der Rembrandt-Zeichnungen” II, Bad Pyrmont 1961, p. 23 (as possibly Gerbrand van den Eeckhout); J.P. Filedt Kok, Rembrandt: Etchings and Drawings in the Rembrandt House, a Catalogue, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1972, p. 90, under no. B. 105 (as Rembrandt, according to Van Regteren Altena); O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. A 23a (as Rembrandt?), with additional earlier literature; P. Schatborn, ‘Tekeningen van Rembrandts leerlingen’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 33 (1985), no. 2, fig. 16; W.W. Robinson, ‘Review of P. Schatborn, Drawings by Rembrandt, his Anonymous Pupils and Followers, The Hague 1985’, Kunstchronik 41 (1988), p. 584; H. Bevers, P. Schatborn and B. Welzel, Rembrandt, the Master and his Workshop: Drawings and Etchings, exh. cat. Berlin (Kupferstichkabinett) and elsewhere 1991-92, p. 142, under no. 45, n. 3; W.A. Liedtke et al., Rembrandt/Not Rembrandt in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Aspects of Connoisseurship, 2 vols., exh. cat. New York 1995-96, II, p. 183, under no. 74, n. 3 (as Ferdinand Bol)

B. van Sighem, 2000/M. Ram, 2019, 'attributed to Willem Drost, St Jerome Reading in his Study, Amsterdam, c. 1650 - c. 1655', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200125089