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Lot Essay
The recto is a study for Rubens's picture Le Christ la Paille in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp, of 1617-8. The Antwerp picture was the central part of a triptych commissioned for Antwerp Cathedral by the widow of Jan Michielsen, an Antwerp merchant, after the death of her husband on 20 June 1617. The present drawing was executed before the iconography that gave its name to the picture had been finalized: the slab of stone for Christ in the painting is covered with straw, while in the drawing the slab itself is hardly visible. There are other differences in the drawing compared with the picture, for instance, Saint John is replaced by Joseph of Arimathea and the figure in the foreground moved to the back.
The verso of the sheet is connected to a lost drawing executed in preparation for a picture or a print of the Consecration of Saint Eloi as Bishop of Noyon, as was pointed out by the late Michael Jaff. The full composition is recorded in a school drawing in the Rubenianum in Antwerp and in an etching, in reverse, by P. Soutman, H. Vlieghe, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, London, 1973, no. 160, figs. 138-9. The Rubenianum drawing represents a man seated in prayer flanked by bishops placing a mitre on his head, with a kneeling deacon holding a book in the foreground. The verso of the present drawing prepares the right side of the composition and is centered on the bishop holding a crozier on the left of the Rubenianum sheet. A thin line to the right of the bishop delineates the composition and the figure drawn on the right of it is for the kneeling deacon. Rubens' lost composition is also developed in two further drawings: one, in Berlin, represents a similar setting but seen from an angle, and the other drawing, in the Louvre, shows the figures frontally, as in the print, but cut half-length, H. Vlieghe, op. cit., figs. 136-7. As Professor Jaff pointed out, the Soutman print is inscribed 'Cum Privil', which corresponds to a 'privilege' Rubens received in 1619 for prints after his own compositions. As Soutman left Antwerp in 1624, the print was engraved between these two dates. Michael Jaff dates the verso of the drawing from the second half of 1617 to the second half of 1618, the same as the recto.
The verso of the sheet is connected to a lost drawing executed in preparation for a picture or a print of the Consecration of Saint Eloi as Bishop of Noyon, as was pointed out by the late Michael Jaff. The full composition is recorded in a school drawing in the Rubenianum in Antwerp and in an etching, in reverse, by P. Soutman, H. Vlieghe, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, London, 1973, no. 160, figs. 138-9. The Rubenianum drawing represents a man seated in prayer flanked by bishops placing a mitre on his head, with a kneeling deacon holding a book in the foreground. The verso of the present drawing prepares the right side of the composition and is centered on the bishop holding a crozier on the left of the Rubenianum sheet. A thin line to the right of the bishop delineates the composition and the figure drawn on the right of it is for the kneeling deacon. Rubens' lost composition is also developed in two further drawings: one, in Berlin, represents a similar setting but seen from an angle, and the other drawing, in the Louvre, shows the figures frontally, as in the print, but cut half-length, H. Vlieghe, op. cit., figs. 136-7. As Professor Jaff pointed out, the Soutman print is inscribed 'Cum Privil', which corresponds to a 'privilege' Rubens received in 1619 for prints after his own compositions. As Soutman left Antwerp in 1624, the print was engraved between these two dates. Michael Jaff dates the verso of the drawing from the second half of 1617 to the second half of 1618, the same as the recto.