* Jan van der Straet, called Stradanus Bruges 1523 - 1605 Florence

sale, Christie's, London, 1 July 1969, lot 303 (as Tiarini, A Carmelite Saint)

London, Yvonne Tan Bunzl at Faerber and Maison, Old Master Paintings and Drawings, April 1970, cat. no. 48 (as Stradanus, St. Joseph)

K.G. Boon, The Netherlandish and  German Drawings...of the Frits Lugt Collection, Paris 1992, vol. I, p. 355, note 9;
Alessandra Baroni Vannucci, Jan Van Der Straet detto Giovanni Stradano, Milan 1997, p. 328, cat. no. 650; p. 414, under cat. no. 708.

In cataloguing the related drawing of The Prophet Elisha, in the Lugt Collection, Karel Boon (loc. cit.) was the first to recognize that this is the preparatory drawing by Stradanus for plate 11 in a series of prints of Old Testament prophets, which is known in at least two editions, one published under the title Icones Prophetarum Veteris Testamenti by Theodore Galle in Antwerp in 1613, the other probably earlier.  This drawing is in reverse to the print (fig. 1) and, as Dr. Boon suggests, the halo and the flowering branch seem to indicate that the figure was originally intended to be a St. Joseph.  He also mentions that a sketch for the figure appears on the verso of a Stradanus drawing in the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, New York (inv. no. 1901-39-129).  Vannucci (loc. cit.) identifies eight preparatory drawings related to the prints: as well as the present example and the one in the Lugt collection, others are in Edinburgh and Liverpool, and four others were on the art market.  Similar drawings by Stradanus of New Testament figures are also known, suggesting that he may have planned another, parallel series of prints, though no such prints were ever in fact made.