Attributed to Karel Dujardin

Flat copper plate. On right edge plate has been rubbed by frame leading to paint loss, however frame now covers the loss. U.V. light reveals small retouchings throughout sky, mostly limited to retouches throughout rest of composition. The tree group to the right contains a small patch of over paint. Figures are in good condition with few repairs. Paint quality is still strong and vibrant. Painting may be hung as is. In a carved and painted frame.
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Small-scale history paintings by Karel Dujardin are extremely rare.  This picture is entirely consistent with another small-scale history painting that has been securely attributed Dujardin, The Flood, now in a private collection, New York, most notably in the pose of the slain Abel, which is very similar to that of the fallen youth in The Flood.  It has been suggested that Dujardin borrowed that pose from the dead woman in the foreground of Poussin's The Plague at Ashdod, which was in Rome from 1647 to 1649, and which du Jardin may have seen in his travels to that city in the late 1640s (although there is no documentary evidence to prove he was in the city in those years).  It is more likely that Dujardin's fallen youth corresponds to the dead Adonis in Cornelis Holsteyn's Venus Lamenting the Dead Adonis, Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum.