JACQUES DE GHEYN II
1565-162 9
98 Bust of a Boy in a Turban, a
Winged Angel, and Three Old
Men
Pen and brown ink on light brown fibrous paper, patched
at bottom in the same paper; H: n.8 cm (4II/i6 in.); W:
20.7 cm (SVs in.)
88.GA.i3 4
MARKS AND INSCRIPTIONS: (Recto) at bottom right
corner, collection mark of Gopel(?), inscribed Jaques de
Geijn 1600 in brown ink; (verso) collection mark of Go-
pel(?); inscribed 378 in black ink.
PROVENANCE: E. Ehlers, Gottingen (sale, C. G. Boer-
ner, Leipzig, November 27, 1935, lot 456); Gôpel collec-
tion, Germany; art market, Germany.
EXHIBITIONS: None.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: H. Môhle, Die Zeichnungen Adam Els-
heimers: Das Werk des Meisters una der Problemkreis
Elsheimer-Goudt (Berlin, 1966), p. 63, fig. G28; I. Q. van
Regieren Aliéna, Jacques de Gheyn: Three Generations
(The Hague, Boston, and London, 1983), vols, i, p. 101;
2, p. 80, no. 495; J. O. Hand et al., The Age of Bruegel:
Netherlandish Drawings in the Sixteenth Century, exh. ca
(National Gallery of Art, Washington, and Pierpont
Morgan Library, New York, 1986), p. 150, n. 9, under
no. 52.DE GHEYN FIRST SKETCHED THE THREE FOREGROUND
figures, beginning probably with the boy at the far left.
The studies might have been cut from a larger sheet, at
which time the triangular patch at the bottom was pre-
sumably added. Although their authenticity was upheld
by van Regteren Altena (1983, vol. 2, p. 80), the signatur
and date display a certain stiffness that leads one to con-
clude that they were made by a later hand. Nevertheless,
the drawing indeed appears to have been made circa 1600
or shortly thereafter, and as such should be counted
among the earliest of the spontaneous study sheets co-
mingling motifs from nature and the imagination that
form one of the most original features of de Gheyn's
graphic oeuvre.^1
De Gheyn's debt to the precedent of medieval and
Northern Renaissance physiognomic studies of exotic
types is especially apparent in this drawing.^2 He joins this
older format, however, with a vibrant interest in im-
mediate reality characteristic of his own times, as is evi-
denced in the torso of the young boy at the far left. Dom-
inating the drawing as a whole as he gazes outward at the
viewer, his portraitlike features are at variance with the
other, patently imaginary heads as well as with his own
exotic and—one assumes—fanciful costume.^3 De
Gheyn rendered the boy in exceedingly beautiful, varied
pen work, paying close attention to the fall of light and
evocation of textures, while employing a somewhat sim-
pler and more burinlike manner for the remaining
figures.- The drawing A Seated Woman and Death (Rijksprentenka-
binet inv. A 3964) bears an identical inscription of the artist's
name and date of 1600 and is drawn in a comparable pen style.
For a discussion of de Gheyn's sheets of studies, which date
roughly between 1600 and 1604, see W. W. Robinson in Hand
etal. 1986, pp. 148-50, no. 52. - Compare it, for example, with the lower portion of Two
Rows of Half-Length Figures by a follower of Schongauer (Brit-
ish Museum inv. 5236-165). For the link between de Gheyn's
drawings and earlier traditions of model books and physiog-
nomic studies, see E. K.J. Reznicek, "Two 'Masters of the
Pen,'" in Jacques de Gheyn II Drawings 1565-1629, exh. ca
(Museum Boymans-vanBeuningen, Rotterdam, and National
Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1986), p. i6;J. R. Judson,
The Drawings of Jacob de Gheyn II (New York, 1973), p. 18. - Van Regteren Altena tentatively identified the child as
Jacques de Gheyn III (1983, vol. 2, p. 80, no. 495).
230 DUTCH SCHOOL • DE GHEYN II