Netherlandish School, circa 1480

Prosper Henry Lankrink (1628-1692), London (L.2090);

Max von Heyl zu Herrnsheim (1844-1925), Darmstadt (L.2879);

sale, London, Sotheby’s, 4 July 1994, lot 152;

with Kate de Rothschild, London, 1996;

sale, Paris, Christie's, 27 March 2019, lot 35,

where acquired

As Giulia Bartrum noted at the time of the 1994 sale, the distinctive, lively penwork seen in this drawing and the characterstically applied hatching are very comparable to another drawing depicting St. Martha, in the British Museum, which would seem to be by the same hand.¹ Both drawings were once in the collection of the seventeenth-century Flemish-born painter active in England, Prosper Henry Lankrink, and must have been part of a larger series of female saints. The name of the saint depicted in the London sheet is inscribed at the top of the drawing, and the present sheet also bears a similar inscription. Although this is now illegible, the attributes carried by the saint indicate she must be the princess and scholar Catherine of Alexandria, whose life ended with her beheading.

^1.London, British Museum, inv. SL,5237.95; see A.E. Popham, Dutch and Flemish drawings of the XV and XVI centuries, London 1932, p. 63, no. 8, pl. XXII