Lot Essay
The numbering visible on these two drawings enables them to be traced back to an album, probably assembled in the early 18th Century, which was formerly in the collection of Paul Brandt in Amsterdam. It contained around 90 drawings by various hands, each numbered in this distinctive fashion. 33 were noted by Boon (op. cit.), including thirteen by either Jacques de Gheyn II or III, of which six are now in the Fondation Custodia and two in the Rijksmuseum (K.G. Boon, Netherlandish Drawings of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries in the Rijksmusuem, Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 1978, I, nos. 679 and 50, III, pls. 79 and 3 respectively). The present drawings were placed in the album beside the Portrait of a young woman by Jacques de Gheyn II, which bears the number '90' and is now in the Fondation Custodia (Boon, op. cit., no. 84).