Anonymous, 16th century, reworked by Sir Peter Paul Rubens

Prosper Henry Lankrink (1628-1692), London (L.2090);
C.R. Rudolf, London,
his sale, Amsterdam, Sotheby Mak van Waay, 6 June 1977, lot 45¹;
with Baskett & Day, London, 1982 (Exhibition of Fifty Old Master Drawings, no. 17)

The Arts Council, London, Old Master Drawings from the Collection of Mr. C.R. Rudolf, 1962, no 130

J. Müller Hofstede, 'Beiträge zum zeichnerische Werk von Rubens,' Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch, 27, 1965, p. 262, note 7 (as Pieter Coecke or Pupil, retouched by Rubens);
G. Marlier, La Renaissance flamande: Pierre Coeck d'Alost, Brussels 1966, p. 304;
K. Lohse Belkin, 'The Classification of Rubens's Drawings Collection,' Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch, 55, 1994, pp. 105-114, fig. 7;
K. Lohse Belkin, Rubens. Copies and Adaptations from Renaissance and Later Artists: German and Flemish Artists, (Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard Part XXVI), London/Turnhout 2009, vol. I, pp. 272-2, no. 145, reproduced vol. II, fig. 376

Laid down on card which has in turn been window mounted on a modern card backing. There is evidence of some very light surface dirt throughout and a small light brown stains to the lower left and upper right of the sheet. The left and right edges have been partly extended and there is a small repaired tear to the lower left edge. The drawing remains in otherwise good condition with the image strong. Sold unframed.
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As has been much described in the literature, Rubens’s working method involved not only copying works by other masters, in oil as well as in drawn media, but also collecting drawn copies made by other artists, copies which he frequently reworked extensively.²  Very occasionally he also seems to have reworked independent drawings by other artists, but the vast majority of these reworked sheets started life as copies of another work.   More than two hundred drawings by other artists, reworked by Rubens, are known, and in some cases, as here, Rubens’s intervention is so comprehensive that it is hard to determine even what nationality the underlying copy originally was.  In this case, suggested attributions have included Pieter Coecke van Aelst or his circle (Müller Hofstede), Hans Süss von Kulmbach (A.E. Popham), Federico Zuccaro (Michael Jaffé) and an anonymous mannerist working in the orbit of Spranger (George Keyes, in the 1977 Rudolf sale catalogue).  Finding a resolution to this conundrum is not made any easier by the fact that no prototype for the composition has so far been identified.

The drawing began life as a rectangular sheet, but was at some point converted into an oval, with parts of the paper from the cut corners being used to make the additional strips at the sides (as is clear from the inconsistent direction of the lines in the paper in these areas), the whole sheet, in its new format, being pasted down onto a new backing.  Although Rubens frequently did enlarge or otherwise adapt the format of his reworked copies, Belkin believes that the changes seen here were made by a later owner of the drawing, possibly Lankrink.  In any case, Rubens was responsible for the comprehensive reworking of the drawing itself, redrawing contours, adding accents in boldly applied pen and ink, and creating three-dimensionality and modelling with skilful additions in yellowish-green bodycolour and white oil paint. 

The sheet can be related, as Belkin has noted, to a group of drawings that Rubens seems to have collected and reworked in the 1630s.³  At this time, he seems to have been particularly interested in sculptural figures of this kind, perhaps in connection with his designs for figural elements in decorative programmes on which he was working, such as the 1635 triumphal entry of the Cardinal Infante Ferdinand into Antwerp, or the Triumphal Chariot of the Victory of Calloo.

^1.  Belkin, op. cit., 2009, gives the date of the Rudolf sale as 13 May 1974, and includes in the provenance another owner (Francis Thompson, Cape Town) between that date and the 1977 sale, but the drawing was in fact consigned in 1977 from the Rudolf collection, where it had been continuously since at least the time of the 1962 exhibition

^2.  See A.M. Logan and M. Plomp, Peter Paul Rubens, The Drawings, exh. cat., New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005, pp. 4-7, 15-18

^3.  Belkin, op. cit., 2009, nos. 82-85