A stag hunt with huntsmen holding a stag at bay, an elegant horseman with a falcon and his companion riding sidesaddle to the right

The handling of the present drawing, particularly the definition of foliage and the parallel hatching in the sky, is closely comparable to a Landscape with the Sacrifice of Isaac, dated 1570, in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, which is of almost exactly the same dimensions (H.G. Franz, Niederländische Landschaftsmalerei im Zeitalter des Manierismus, Graz, 1969, no. 312). The subject of the stag hunt was also treated in a drawing of 1575 now in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (H.G. Franz, op. cit., no. 315).
Hans Bol entered the Painter's Guild in Mechelen in 1560, although his earliest dated drawing, strongly influenced by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, was executed in 1557. The present drawing was made in 1571, a year before Bol fled to Antwerp to escape the Spanish occupation of his native city.