Seven Figure Studies

The same female model has been depicted twice, once (right) with her hair hanging loose and her right shoulder half bare, once (left) with her hair bound up under a cap and her right shoulder covered.¹ She is looking away to the left in lost profile. This particular head can be connected to the print Sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus, engraved around 1600 by Jan Saenredam after a design by Bloemaert, and issued by Jacques Razet in Amsterdam (ill. 1).² Taking into account the reversed image, the figure of Ceres, standing at the right, is very similar to our study in the position of the torso, the way the head is turned away from the beholder, with two prominent strings of hair, one hanging down on her back along her spine, the other over her bare shoulder towards her left breast. Bloemaert made countless figure studies like these, both in the process of preparing details in compositions to be painted, as for later use, kept in his workshop portfolios. Originally the paper sheet was larger, judging from the discontinued figure at the right edge (and the one on the corresponding left edge of the reverse); it has been cropped up by a later owner (who preferred the present verso drawing over the one on the recto judging from the cadre around it) and is possibly part of a larger sheet with other studies. A similar double-sided sheet with various studies of heads and arms, likewise executed in red chalk with white heightenings, is in the Jean Bonna Collection.³It is conceivable that sheets like these, now solitary and cropped, were once part of a drawing-book.⁴

It has been suggested that the studies on both sides are connected to The Baptism of Christ, a late painting by Bloemaert dated 1646,⁵ but this does not seem probable, as the three main figures in the foreground of that painting are actually rather close copies of figures in earlier paintings from 1602 and c. 1625-1630.⁶Bolten considers the studies on the reverse as stylistically different from those on the recto side and dates them four decades later. This would mean that Bloemaert reused existing study sheets in his portfolios, adding more on the blank sides, which is not likely to have happened after such a long time. Actually, two of the verso studies are related to the earlier painting The Baptism of Christ from 1602 (the outstretched left leg at bottom centre and the lower leg at top centre), and the studies of a praying boy and that of a partly bare leg with extended shoe resemble details in the engraving The Annunciation to the Shepherds by Jan Saenredam, after a design by Bloemaert, dated 1599.⁷ The study of a male nude at bottom right is similar to the standing nude in the background of Bloemaert’s painting Moses Striking the Rock, dated 1596.⁸ It is therefore safe to assume that the drawings on both sides were done somewhere between 1595 and 1602.

Study sheets like this one are characteristic for Bloemaert’s working method, combining various studies, making optimal use of the available space, on both sides. Sometimes the studies on one page are all related to one painting project and specially made for that purpose.⁹ In most cases, they are not preparatory but unrelated studies as such. Bloemaert’s workshop stock included countless studies of human figures in all kinds of poses and settings, as well as individual parts of the body, such as heads, hands and legs, many of which were later engraved and published in the Tekenboek.¹⁰