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Identification and Creation

Object Number
1898.128
People
Unidentified Artist
after Hendrick Goltzius, Dutch (Mühlbracht 1558 - 1617 Haarlem, Netherlands)
after Jacob Matham, Dutch (Haarlem, Netherlands 1571 - 1631 Haarlem, Netherlands)
Title
Ezekiel; verso: Two Studies of a Youth
Other Titles
Alternate Title: Sibyl
Classification
Drawings
Work Type
drawing
Date
after 1589
Culture
Dutch
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/292465

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Brown ink and black chalk on off-white antique laid paper; verso: black chalk
Dimensions
20.7 × 11.2 cm (8 1/8 × 4 7/16 in.)
Inscriptions and Marks
  • inscription: former mount, graphite: [by John Witt Randall] from the Cabinet of Sir Edward Buchan. Dresden / see other drawing in my col of (Batista Frano il Semolei) of M Angelo school
  • inscription: former mount, graphite: [by Emil Karel Josef Reznicek] after Goltzius's engraving / Rez.
  • inscription: former mount, graphite: [by later hands] Crispin de Passe / no. 493 / A Sybil (?) A Sybil (?) / H. Goltzius (?) Dt. 1558-1617 / 2 studies of / a Youth + a Leg / 582. / 508 [crossed out]
  • collector's mark: verso, lower center, purple ink : [mark of John Witt Randall (Lugt 2130) [handwritten, brown ink:] 582]
  • watermark: none

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
[Eduard von Buchan, Dresden]. John Witt Randall, Boston, Massachusetts (L. 2130, verso, lower center), bequest; to Belinda Lull Randall, Boston, Massachusetts, 1892; Gift of Belinda L. Randall from the collection of John Witt Randall, 1898.128

Published Text

Catalogue
Drawings from the Age of Bruegel, Rubens, and Rembrandt: The Complete Collection Online
Authors
Multiple authors
Publisher
Harvard Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 2017–)

Entry by Austeja Mackelaite, completed November 01, 2017:

This sheet is a copy after one of a series of five engravings attributed to Jacob Matham and published in 1589 (Fig. 1) showing prophets from the Old Testament after Goltzius’s designs.1 In this partial copy, the draftsman focused his attention solely on the figure of the prophet Ezekiel, ignoring the surrounding landscape. He attempted to reproduce Matham’s engraving line-for-line and very close to scale. A black chalk study on the verso, depicting two youths, is also likely to be a copy after a detail in a print, although its source has not been identified.

The drawing was probably made in the early decades of the 17th century, when mannerist prints were commonly used in artistic training.2 In his book The Compleat Gentleman, first published in 1622, English writer and poet Henry Peacham advised young draftsmen to aim “for a bold touch, variety of posture, curious and true shadow, [and to] imitate Goltzius, his prints are commonly to be had in Pope-head-alley.”3 While in some surviving copies of prints by or after Goltzius black chalk or wash was used to record the composition, in the Harvard sheet the close attention to Matham’s linear language suggests that the drawing might have been made as a training exercise by an aspiring engraver.

This drawing comes from the collection of John Witt Randall, one of the first American collectors of northern European drawings. According to his inscription on the mount, Randall purchased the work, at the time attributed to Battista Franco (c. 1510–1561), in 1851 from Dresden-based artist and art dealer Eduard von Buchan (1800–1876).4 Although only a handful of works by him are known today, Von Buchan was a pupil of painter Johan Christian Dahl at the Dresden Art Academy in the late 1820s and early 1830s.5

Notes

1 Jacob Matham (attr.), after Hendrick Goltzius, Ezekiel, from Old Testament Prophets, 1589, engraving, first state, 250 × 170 mm, London, British Museum, 1857,0613.537. See Léna Widerkehr in New Hollstein, Jacob Matham, part 3, no. 288, p. 5.

2 On the early modern practice of copying prints, see Michael Kwakkelstein, “Copying Prints as an Aspect of Artistic Training in the Renaissance,” in Images of Death: Rubens Copies Holbein, ed. Kristin Lohse Belkin et al. (Antwerp: Snoeck-Ducau & Zoon, 2000), pp. 35–62, esp. 42–46; Christian Tico Seifert, “Von Amateuren und Virtuosen: Überlegungen zu Zeichnungen nach druckgraphischen Vorlagen,” in Druckgraphik: zwischen Reproduktion und Invention, ed. Markus A. Castor et al. (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2010), pp. 11–24. On faithful pen copies of mannerist engravings, see E. K. J. Reznicek, “Jan Harmensz. Muller as Draughtsman: Addenda,” Master Drawings 18 (2) (1980): 116–18; and Huigen Leeflang, “Van ontwerp naar prent: tekeningen voor prenten van Nederlandse meesters (1550–1700) uit de collectie van het Prentenkabinet van de Universiteit Leiden,” Delineavit et sculpsit 27 (2003): 46. As Leeflang notes, a number of such faithful copies continue being falsely catalogued as by the artist.

3 Henry Peacham, The Compleat Gentleman (London, 1634), reprinted in Peacham’s Compleat Gentleman (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906), p. 128; and E. K. J. Reznicek, Die Zeichnungen von Hendrick Goltzius (Utrecht: Haentjens Dekker & Gumbert, 1961), 1: 32.

4 On Randall’s collection of drawings, see William W. Robinson, “John Witt Randall: An Early American Collector of Later German Drawings,” Master Drawings 39 (2) (2001): 159–68. According to Robinson, Dresden dealers supplied the majority of works in Randall’s collection. Other drawings Randall purchased from Von Buchan that are in the Harvard Art Museums collections are Johann Heinrich Stürmer, The Fortune Teller, 1898.234; Unidentified artist, Putti Carrying Branches, 1898.299; and Jan Joost van Cossiau, Christ and Nicodemus, 1898.574 and Christ and the Woman of Samaria, 1898.575. The annotation by Randall on the mount of the latter work indicates that the purchase from Von Buchan was made through Louis Thies, a Cambridge-based collector and dealer. It is possible that Thies also acted as the intermediary for the other three drawings.

5 For a biography of Von Buchan, see Helmut Börsch-Supan’s lot essay in Galerie Bassenge, Berlin, Gemälde Alter und Neuerer Meister, 25 November 2016, lot 6099.

Figures

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of Belinda L. Randall from the collection of John Witt Randall
Accession Year
1898
Object Number
1898.128
Division
European and American Art
Contact
am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu
Permissions

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Publication History

  • Agnes Mongan and Paul J. Sachs, Drawings in the Fogg Museum of Art, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, 1940), vol. 1, cat. no. 493, p. 260, as Hendrick Goltzius (?)

Subjects and Contexts

  • Dutch, Flemish, & Netherlandish Drawings

Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of European and American Art at am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu