Attributed to Sir Peter Paul Rubens Siegen 1577 - 1640 Antwerp

William Young Ottley (L.2665);
Ch. A. de Burlet, Basel;
acquired from him, 3 March 1935, by Dr. Tobias Christ, Basel (inv. no. 103);
thence by inheritance to the present owners

Slight thin spots in all four corners. A little wrinkled and dirty towards left edge. Ink from each side shows through somewhat to the other sides. Remains of various paper hinges towards edges, verso.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Given the composition on the recto of this sheet, it is not surprising that it has always in the past been attributed to Adam Elsheimer (1578-1610).  Elsheimer’s two paintings of Tobias and the Angel in a Landscape, the smaller¹ painted some time shortly before 1608 and the larger² not long thereafter, are highly iconic compositions which, in combination with the prints after both paintings made by Hendrick Goudt in 1608 and 1613, had a remarkably wide-ranging impact on western European art of the early 17^th century. 

The draughtsman who made this drawing must, beyond any shadow of doubt, have seen Elsheimer’s composition and absorbed it, but this extremely accomplished artist has done very much more than copy it, reinterpreting it in a respectful yet innovative way.  In both of Elsheimer’s paintings, the figures are depicted moving into the landscape, as if the goal of their journey might somehow be found within the composition;  here, in contrast, the figures are shown already most of the way through their journey across the picture plane and on the point of striding out beyond its boundaries to the right, in a much less stable and in some ways more original composition. 

Even more personal than this re-interpretation of Elsheimer’s Tobias composition is the figure study on the verso of this sheet, a heavily reworked study of a Minerva figure which shows the input of a highly gifted and original mind.  This figure drawing was clearly made in two stages.  First, the artist made a careful study of a standing figure of Minerva, her owl at her feet, executed in black chalk, the basis for which was probably an antique sculpture.  Of itself, this might be seen as a relatively unremarkable copy after the antique, but the way in which it has been reworked and redefined makes it exceptional.  On top of the initial chalk sketch, the artist has reworked the entire figure study in pen and brown ink, making some dramatic changes along the way.  Throughout the figure, the pen-work results in slight alterations in the pose, but most significantly of all, the face in the ink drawing is turned to the side, which is in striking contrast to the fully frontal representation seen in the underlying black chalk drawing. In addition to the redefinition of the original figure resulting from the pen drawing that lies over the original chalk, there are also revisions in another, slightly heavier black chalk, the most significant of which is the deletion of the owl – the very attribute of Minerva – thus transforming the subject at a stroke from a depiction of a specific classical personage into a more generalised antique warrior figure.   

Who could possibly have made these two studies, the one a free and creative reinterpretation of Elsheimer’s iconic composition, the other a rather revisionist copy of a figure after the antique?  Only one artist comes easily to mind, who was in Rome during the first decade of the 17^th century, who was exposed to the work of Elsheimer, who had a fascination with the antique and who might have had the confidence to make such a work: Peter Paul Rubens.

During the course of his visits to Italy between 1600 and 1608, Rubens made many copies of antique, renaissance and more “contemporary” works that he saw, and also reworked and adapted a variety of these compositions and motifs into other contexts.  In his copies after other artists, he frequently made significant alterations in the poses, which serve to make them more expressive, and he also sometimes took separate figure groups from, for example, print compositions, and combined them in new ways, to make entirely new compositions (e.g. the drawing, in Frankfurt, which amalgamates two different Goltzius prints³). He also, famously, collected copies made by other artists after antique and renaissance prototypes, and reworked these drawings, again to make them more powerful and animated.⁴ The way in which the Minerva figure is here reworked is utterly in keeping with Rubens’s working method, and the handling and facial type, particularly in the pen-work, is also closely comparable with other copies after the antique; a particularly close example is a drawing, also representing Minerva  (though only her head, and in profile), which must have been copied after a coin or gem.⁵

The much more expansively worked drawing of Tobias and the Angel is perhaps harder to reconcile with the early works of Rubens, though perhaps largely because it is predominantly a landscape composition, and we have no surviving landscape drawings by Rubens from this period:  landscape seems to have been a subject that attracted Rubens’s interest only much later in his career, after he purchased his country estate at Het Steen in 1635. If, however, one isolates the two figures from the landscape, the extent to which they are drawn in a Rubensian manner becomes more apparent.  The swirling yet purposeful lines, and the specific forms of the faces, can be compared with a number of compositional drawings dating from the Italian period or shortly thereafter, such as The Battle of the Greeks and Amazons, in the British Museum, dated by Logan to 1602-4, the slightly more meticulous and somewhat later (1608) Albertina altarpiece study, Adoration of the Image of the Virgin and Child, or the smaller-scale compositional drawings that Rubens made just after his return from Italy, such as the Metropolitan Museum’s study of The Presentation in the Temple⁶. Perhaps the most significant comparison amongst these smaller composition drawings is, however, with the circa 1609-11 study for the National Gallery, London, painting of Samson and Delilah⁷, a drawing in which the broader passages can be compared with the figures of Tobias and the Angel, but which also presents parallels with the study of Minerva on the verso of the present sheet, notably in the treatment of  Delilah’s arm and face.

Though originating from the same early 17^th-centuy Roman artistic milieu in which Elsheimer was such a powerful presence, and exploring themes also dear to his heart, this drawing is not by Elsheimer, to whom it has until now always been attributed.  It is, however, an extremely accomplished work, and also a strikingly original and imaginative one.  When one investigates this originality, and also the specific drawing technique, in more depth, it becomes increasingly clear that the closest parallels to this work, both stylistically and conceptually, are to be found in the drawings of Peter Paul Rubens.

1. Copper, 12.4 x 19.2cm, Frankfurt, Historisches Museum, inv.no. B 789; see R. Klessmann et al, Adam Elsheimer 1578-1610, exhibition catalogue, Edinburgh, National gallery of Scotland, et al, 2006, cat. no. 30

2. Original now lost, but known from a copy, copper, 21 x 27cm, in Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst, inv. No. 207 (Sp. 745); see Klessmann, op. cit., cat. no. 34.

3. Städelsches Kunstunstitut, inv. no. 806; see Anne-Marie Logan, Peter Paul Rubens, The Drawings, exhibition catalogue, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005, cat. no. 2 

4. Scholars disagree, however, about exactly how many of the underlying copies are by other artists and how many by Rubens himself.  See Jeremy Wood, Rubens, Drawing on Italy, exhibition catalogue, Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland, and Nottingham, Djanogly Art Gallery, 2002, and the review of this exhibition by Gregory Rubinstein, Historians of Netherlandish Art Newsletter, vol. 20, no. 1, April 2003, pp. 24-26.

5. John Rowlands, Rubens, Drawings and Sketches, exhibition catalogue, London, The British Museum, 1977, p. 99, cat. no. 138d.

6. see Logan, op. cit., cat. nos. 12, 18 and 28, respectively.

7. Private collection; see Logan, op. cit., cat. no. 30.