A warrior holding a lance seated on a drum

This soldier seated on a drum was identified as the god Mars by van Regteren Altena who compiled de Gheyn's catalogue raisonné and in whose collection this drawing once featured. Altena considered it to be 'a late drawing in the artist's freest manner'. With its loose yet precise handling of the pen it can be compared especially with a study of a Woman breastfeeding a child also from the Altena collection (op. cit., no. 593, fig. 369; to be sold at Christie's Amsterdam, 13 May 2015 and reproduced at the end of this catalogue) or The Archangel Saint Michael in the Print Room of the Ferdinandeum, Innsbruck (op. cit., no. 85, fig. 414). It is also close to a study representing Empedocles in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen which is preparatory to a more finished drawing dated '1613' in the Victoria and Albert Museum (op. cit., nos, 132 and 133, figs. 381 and 381a). The present drawing must have been executed around that time.