A village before a lake, with two figures in the foreground

This drawing forms a pair with a Landscape with a river in the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Vienna (H.G. Franz, Niederländische Landschaftsmalerei, Graz, 1969, no. 321). Like the present drawing the Vienna sheet is dated 1584 and is drawn with the point of the brush, a technique unusual in Bol's oeuvre.
This technique is reminiscent of the handling of Bol's works in bodycolor on vellum, and indeed the signature on the present drawing is close to those found on a number of the artist's miniatures.