Study of a man carrying a chest

Now chiefly celebrated for being the teacher of Rembrandt (1606-1669), Pieter Lastman was regarded very highly by his contemporaries as a painter of Italianate history pictures. This is one of a series of figure drawings on yellow-washed paper, which served as preparatory studies for paintings in the 1620s and early 1630s. A comparable drawing in the same technique is in the Hamburger Kunsthalle, representing A kneeling woman and a boy, which was used for figures in the Coriolanus of 1625 (Dublin, Trinity College; P. Schatborn and L. van Sloten, Old Drawings, New Names, exhib. cat., Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis, 2014, pp. 151-2, figs. 52a-b). The man in the present drawing appears in the right background of Lastman’s late picture Dido’s Offering to Juno where, rather than carrying a chest as in the present drawing, he is shown restraining the sacrificial calf (1630; Nationalmuseum, Stockholm; Pieter Lastman: In Rembrandts Schatten?, exhib. cat., Hamburg, Kunsthalle, 2006, no. 6). There are also striking similarities with the figure of Odysseus in Athena and Odysseus: there he is shown in a more upright pose, bracing himself against the weight of the basket he carries (1625; Museum Het Rembrandthuis, Amsterdam; Hamburg, 2006, op. cit., no. 4).