Pieter Boddingh van Laer Haarlem 1599 - 1642 (?)

G. Briganti, L. Trezzani, & L. Laureati, The Bamboccianti, Rome 1983, p. 42, reproduced.

As Ludovica Trezzani (see Literature) and others have noted, the composition of this painting would point to a date of execution in 1625, the year of Van Laer's arrival in Rome; it can be compared, for example, with his drawing of a very similar composition in Leyden, Prentenkabinet der Rijksuniversiteit (ibid., p. 40, fig. 1.2), a copy of which, by Roeland van Laer, is dated 1625. It has been argued that this painting must have been executed during the artist's passage through France, as the hairstyle of the rider echoes that of the cadanette, in which a lock falls longer over the left shoulder, fashionable there in the 1620s.

Van Laer must have used this painting, or the drawing for it, in composing other works in later years; the horse, for example, appears in the same pose (in profile with the right-hand rear leg raised forward) in a drawing dated 1628 (ibid., p. 45, fig. 1.7) and in the resulting painting in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg (ibid., p. 46, fig. 1.8). The form of the signature is consistent with those used by the artists before he changed his paternal name from Boddingh to Van Laer.