Kneeling Woman with Child

Author: Rosie Razzall, addition to catalogue, 2023

This attractive drawing of a woman kneeling to kiss a child was listed at the museum as a drawing by Paris Bordone (1500-1571) until 2023,^[1] an attribution tentatively accepted by Andrea Donati in his 2014 catalogue raisonné of that artist’s drawings.^[2] However, the drawing had already been recognized in 1967 as being related to the kneeling woman and child in Frans Floris’ painting Suffer the Little Children Come Unto Me, of which two principal versions are listed.^[3] Both versions have been copied several times and exist with minor variants, but in one of them the child wears a piece of drapery, as can be seen for example in the copy of the painting from the Grzimek collection at Schloss Montfort, Langenargen, Friedrichshafen, while in the other version of the painting the child is nude. The child in the Rotterdam drawing is also wearing drapery at his waist, and must relate more closely to that version of the painting.

While J. Müller-Hofstede attributes the sheet to Floris himself, Carl van de Velde and Edward Wouk are more uncertain. The use of chalk is unusual for Floris, whose drawings are more typically executed in pen and ink. However, it is possible that the surviving oeuvre of drawings by Floris does not accurately reflect the extent to which the artist did actually use chalk: the art historian Karel van Mander (1548-1606) described Floris making chalk drawings after the antique, and his students making secret counterproofs of their master’s chalk drawings.^[4] This brief remark may even help to explain the function of the Rotterdam drawing. The outlines of the upper body and head of the child and the woman’s face have been reinforced in a darker, oiled chalk, suggesting that it may be a worked-up counterproof. Stijn Alsteens has noted that the pentimenti in the woman’s feet are suggestive of a preparatory study, and the fact that a version of the painting in reverse sold at Christie’s, New York in 2004,^[5] may also support the idea that this is a counterproof of an autograph sheet by Floris.^[6]