This recently discovered drawing can be compared stylistically with two sheets of a relatively early date in the artist's production: both relate to a now lost altarpiece of an Assembly of martyred Saints, one in the Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfort and the other in the Louvre, J. Thuillier, L'Art en Lorraine au Temps de Jacques Callot, exh. cat. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nancy, 1992, no. 2, illustrated and p. 138, fig. 1. The composition of both the Frankfurt and Paris sheets is very similar, except for the addition of a Saint Sebastian on the latter. The foreground in both works is occupied by the figure of Saint Lawrence, recognized by Georges-François Pariset and Margaret Stuffman as a quotation from the figure of the same saint Lawrence in Zuccaro's Coronation of the Virgin, known to Bellange through an engraving by Sadeler. Interestingly, the present figure of Saint Sebastian is directly inspired by another engraving by Sadeler, Saint Sebastian tied to a Tree (Holl. XXII, 95). The general pose and most specifically the position of the head and arms are identical; such a fact corroborates Dr. Hilliard Goldfarb's dating of the sheet to around 1602. Indeed such references to other artists' works exclude, for the present sheet, as well as for the Louvre and the Frankfurt ones, later dates of execution. Technically the drawing would predate the Lamentation from the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon of about 1602-3.
The fact that some of the outlines are incised raises the problem of the artist's early activities as an engraver. It has been mentioned that he started producing prints only around 1610. However, not all of the outlines of the present drawing are incised and such an incision may have been done for another purpose.
Dr. Hilliard Goldfard, on the basis of a photograph, has kindly confirmed the attribution to Bellange.