Jan Lievens

With J.O. Leegenhoek, Paris, by 1971.

Advertisement in The Burlington Magazine, December 1971, vol. CXIII, no. 825, p. 778, reproduced plate XXVI;
W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schuler, Landau/Pfalz 1983, vol. VI, Supplement, p. 3729, no. 2366, reproduced p. 3976.

Sumowski compares this picture with two other studies in profile of bearded old men; one in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, and the other in the Speck von Sternburg collection, Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig.  Both are on panel, and the Leipzig picture is signed with initials.  Sumowski dates all three circa 1635.  We are grateful to Professor Rüdiger Klessmann for independently confirming the attribution on the basis of a transparency.  He dates it circa 1630. 

There is another version, unsigned and slightly smaller, in the Accademia Carrara, Bergamo (inv. no. 702), where it is presently regarded as a painting by Jan Lievens (see F. Rossi, Accademia Carrara. Catalogo dei dipinti sec. XVII-XVIII, vol. 2, Milan 1989, p. 119, no. 702, reproduced; and H. Schneider (revised and ed. by R.E.O. Ekkart), Jan Lievens, Amsterdam 1973, p. 131, no. 154).