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

This drawing, previously unknown, is the preparatory study in reverse for plate 92 of Philips Galle's Venationes Ferarum, Avium, Piscium (fig. 1; see Alessandra Baroni Vannucci, Jan Van der Straet detto Giovanni Stradano, Milan 1997, reproduced p. 387), a series of some one hundred and four prints after designs by Stradanus which illustrate various methods of hunting and fishing.  The complete series was published in Antwerp in several successful editions between about 1596 and 1634, but many of the plates were first issued rather earlier than this, individually or in small groups.  Stradanus probably first met Philips Galle in Antwerp around 1578 when he travelled there in the court of Don Juan of Austria. 

This is one of the most exotic and unexpected of all the subjects depicted in the Venationes, in which most of the compositions show hunting scenes of rather more traditional and familiar types.  Here the divers, in their 16th-century swimming costumes and remarkably sophisticated goggles, are very engagingly depicted, as they proudly surface from the dive, and brandish their precious trophies to their colleagues in the rather unstable looking boats.