Hans Werl was probably the son of Daniel Werl, a footman at the court of the Bavarian dukes. In 1588-9 he was a pupil of Alessandro Paduano, who in turn was a collaborator and brother-in-law of Friedrich Sustris, whose influence is clear is Werl's work. In 1594 he became court painter to Duke Maximilian I, retaining this post after his patron's death in 1597. In 1600 he painted the Holy Virgin venerated by female Saints for the high altar of the court chapel, still in situ, the preliminary drawing for which is in the Kunsthalle, Bremen (H. Geissler, Zeichnung in Deutschland, Deutsche Zeichner 1540-1640, exhibition catalogue, Stuttgart, 1979-80, I, pp. 150-1, no. 19, illustrated). In 1601-2 he worked with Pieter de Witte, called 'Candido', decorating the 'Herkules-Saal' reception hall in the Munich Residenz. The present lot, hitherto unknown, is a design for one of the pictures from Bavarian history commissioned by Duke Maximilian I (1573-1651) which were installed after 1601 in the 'Herkules-Saal'. As pointed out by K.G. Boon (The Netherlandish and German Drawings of the XVth and XVIth Centuries of the Frits Lugt Collection, Paris, 1992, I, p. 497), the programme for the ten fields into which the upper wall of the hall was divided, forming a frieze above the windows that ran along all four walls, was drawn up in 1601 by the Augsburg humanist and historian Marx Welser (1558-1614). Wide paintings showing battles won by the house of Bavaria, the Victory at Ampfing of 1322 and Duke Ludwig of Bavaria defeating Emperor Frederick at Mühldorf in 1462, were hung on the short walls of the room. The preliminary studies for these pictures, comparable with the present lot, are in the Albertina, Vienna (O. Benesch, Beschreibender Katalog der Handzeichnungen in der Graphischen Sammlung Albertina, II, Die Zeichnungen der niederländischen Schulen des XV. und XVI. Jahrhunderts, Vienna, 1928, nos. 180-1, plates 48-9, as P. de Witte). A study for another picture from the series, Albrecht III Duke of Bavaria refusing the Crown of the Kingdom of Bohemia, 1440, is in the Frits Lugt Collection, Fondation Custodia, Institut Néerlandais, Paris (Boon, op.cit., I, no. 290, II, plate 316). Brigitte Knüttel (Zur Geschichte der Münchener Residenz 1660-1616 (1), Münchener Jahrbuch der Bildenden Kunst, XVIII, Munich, 1967, pp. 187-210) first attributed all three drawings to Werl, comparing these to the altar design now in Bremen, for the commissioning of which there is documentary evidence. A print of the interior of the 'Herkules-saal' dated 1614 shows some of the paintings in situ, including that for which the present lot is a study (Knüttel, op.cit., fig. 2). All the paintings from this project are preserved in the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich, though hung at the Filialgalerie Burghausen (cf. Boon, op.cit., III, fig. 186).