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Lot Essay
At the top a curved section of wood has replaced a loss in the support; this runs from just below the corners and is circa 3 cm. wide in the centre. A margin is ruled in graphite down the left edge. First executed in thin brown and black washes, the picture was then in varying degrees worked up in colour, the maid being most fully worked up with the costume and flesh being to a great degree coloured in.
This beautiful little sketch is now generally accepted as Rubens's preparation (the attribution in 1963 by Burchard and d'Hulst to Boeckhorst notwithstanding) for a work of collaboration with Frans Snyders executed in the 1630s. The extant largescale works exist in left hand and right hand compositions; their authorship and status have recently been analysed by Professor Hans Vlieghe and are not our present concern. It is evident, however, that by the exchange of looks devised by Rubens in the modello that he had in mind one composition or at the least two interlocking pendants. His subject seems to have been the contrasting way of restraining or preventing theft. The maid gently stops the boy, who would be shown filching grapes, while the domestic butcher angrily threatens with his knife what was to be a marauding cat in front of the table. In the sketch, Rubens makes the butcher look at the boy as if to make clear that he wants the boy to know what he does to a thief.
In Rubens' earliest, extant modello, the Louvre Recognition of Philopoemen, in which he may have anticipated collaborating with the great still life and animal specialist, Frans Snyders, Rubens himself exuberantly sketched the still life element. Soon after, he may have prepared for a work which was to become Pythagoras advocating Vegetarianism, leaving blank the area to be filled by Snyders, as Elizabeth McGrath (Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XII (1), Subjects from History, II, 1997, pp. 50-51) has suggested. Such was also the case here, where Rubens left blank the area to be filled in by Snyders. The composition must have been fully planned by the two artists and was probably the result of a special commission. In further preparation for the largescale work, Rubens made preparatory life studies. Professor Held, the last authority fully to discuss the present work, dates it circa 1630-1633, which rules out the identification proposed by Robels and Jaffé that the boy is to be identified as Rubens' son, Frans, who was born on 12 July 1633.
This beautiful little sketch is now generally accepted as Rubens's preparation (the attribution in 1963 by Burchard and d'Hulst to Boeckhorst notwithstanding) for a work of collaboration with Frans Snyders executed in the 1630s. The extant largescale works exist in left hand and right hand compositions; their authorship and status have recently been analysed by Professor Hans Vlieghe and are not our present concern. It is evident, however, that by the exchange of looks devised by Rubens in the modello that he had in mind one composition or at the least two interlocking pendants. His subject seems to have been the contrasting way of restraining or preventing theft. The maid gently stops the boy, who would be shown filching grapes, while the domestic butcher angrily threatens with his knife what was to be a marauding cat in front of the table. In the sketch, Rubens makes the butcher look at the boy as if to make clear that he wants the boy to know what he does to a thief.
In Rubens' earliest, extant modello, the Louvre Recognition of Philopoemen, in which he may have anticipated collaborating with the great still life and animal specialist, Frans Snyders, Rubens himself exuberantly sketched the still life element. Soon after, he may have prepared for a work which was to become Pythagoras advocating Vegetarianism, leaving blank the area to be filled by Snyders, as Elizabeth McGrath (Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XII (1), Subjects from History, II, 1997, pp. 50-51) has suggested. Such was also the case here, where Rubens left blank the area to be filled in by Snyders. The composition must have been fully planned by the two artists and was probably the result of a special commission. In further preparation for the largescale work, Rubens made preparatory life studies. Professor Held, the last authority fully to discuss the present work, dates it circa 1630-1633, which rules out the identification proposed by Robels and Jaffé that the boy is to be identified as Rubens' son, Frans, who was born on 12 July 1633.