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. 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. 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.” 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). 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.
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