Willem Drost (attributed to)
Amsterdam, c. 1653
reed pen and brown ink, some areas deliberately rubbed with a finger or brush, with light brown wash, over traces of graphite or black chalk; later additions in pen and grey ink; framing line in dark brown ink
height 161 mm × width 218 mm
Watermark: Letter W [?]
Brown stains; a horizontal fold at lower edge
…; collection Johann Edler Goll von Frankenstein I (1722-85), Amsterdam and Velzen (L. 2987); ...; collection Jacob de Vos Jbzn (1803-78), Amsterdam (L. 1450); his widow, Abrahamina Henrietta de Vos-Wurfbain (1808-83), Amsterdam; his sale, Amsterdam (C.F. Roos et al.), 22 May 1883 sqq., no. 424, as Rembrandt, with fifteen other drawings, fl. 480 for all, to the dealer J.H. Balfoort for the Vereniging Rembrandt (L. 2135);1 from whom on loan to the museum, 1883; from whom acquired by the museum (L. 2228), 1891
Object number: RP-T-1891-A-2423
Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt
Copyright: Public domain
Willem Drost (Amsterdam 1633 - Venice 1659)
He was baptized in the Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam, on 19 April 1633.2 Houbraken mentions that he was a pupil of Rembrandt and that he worked in Rome for a long time.3 Before he entered Rembrandt’s workshop, probably at the end of the 1640s, he may have studied under Rembrandt’s pupil Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627-1678) in the mid-1640s. After Drost left Amsterdam for Italy, where he is documented in Venice from 1655, he abandoned his Rembrandtesque manner and adopted the powerful chiaroscuro style of the Venetian tenebrists. He may have worked only briefly in Rome, but was mostly active in Venice, where he trained Johann Carl Loth (1632–1698), among others, and he is now known to have died there from pneumonia in 1659, at the age of only 25.4 The rediscovery of his burial record in Venice on 25 February 1659 means that many painted works with later dates traditionally ascribed to him have recently been removed from his oeuvre. On the basis of his choice of subject and style, the majority of his drawings seem to have originated during his apprenticeship in Amsterdam under Rembrandt.
The composition and the figure types were used as the basis of a painting in the Wallace Collection, London (inv. no. P86).5 A second painting with the same composition, probably an eighteenth-century copy, is in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich (inv. no. 6299).6 The authorship of the London picture is debated. Traditionally given to Rembrandt, it was first assigned to Drost as early as 1929 by Bredius. This attribution, however, was not endorsed by Bikker, who tentatively suggested that it might be by Karel van der Pluym (1625-1672). On the basis of his rejection of Drost as the author of the London painting and of the sheer number of Rembrandtesque drawings assigned to that Rembrandt pupil, Bikker questioned not only the attribution of the present drawing to Drost, but decried the ‘expansion of Drost’s drawn oeuvre beyond reasonable proportions’.
Yet in the current opinion of drawings specialist Schatborn, who had earlier considered the drawing to be a copy of a lost drawing by Drost,7 it is by the same hand responsible for the drawing of the Liberation of Peter in a private collection, England,8 which is stylistically close to a study of Ruth and Naomi in the Kunsthalle, Bremen (inv. no. 54/437).9 The latter is generally considered the most secure drawing by Drost because of its direct connection with a painting by him of circa 1651 in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (inv. no. WA1929.1).10 In fact, Drost’s entire drawn oeuvre was built up around the Bremen sheet and a drawing of Christ Appearing to Mary Magdalene as a Gardener (‘Noli me tangere’) in the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen (inv. no. KKS7049).11 The latter is a preparatory drawing for a painting by Drost in the Gemäldegalerie, Kassel (inv. no. GK 261).12 Drost’s stylistic characteristics, including the profuse hatching, are clear to see here.
A plausible explanation for the apparent discrepancy between the attribution of painting and drawing was suggested in 2015, when the Amsterdam drawing was shown at the Rembrandthuis. In the catalogue to that exhibition, De Witt proposed that the related Wallace Collection painting is by Heyman Dullaert (1636-1684), a pupil in Rembrandt’s studio from circa 1653 to circa 1656.13 In his view, Drost – Rembrandt’s most talented pupil in the studio during the first half of the 1650s – would have acted, as Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627-1678) had earlier, as a sort of teaching assistant to newer pupils. It thus remains possible that the drawing is an autograph work by Drost, which he offered as a source of inspiration to a fellow pupil under his wing. The fact that it has a faint black chalk underdrawing could indicate that Drost himself copied the composition on the basis of an unknown prototype by Rembrandt (which could also have served as the model for the Wallace Collection painting).
The identification of the biblical scene represented here has also vacillated, between the relatively rare subject of the Roman Centurion Cornelius (the first Gentile to convert to Christianity) sending ‘two of his household servants and a devout soldier’ to Joppa to collect Simon Peter (Acts 10:1-8) and the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant (Matthew 18:21–35). The latter interpretation stems from the belief among some authors that an ancient Roman captain would not have been shown wearing an oriental costume and turban. In their view, the scene shows the biblical parable of a master who had cancelled the debt of one of his servants, only to learn that the servant in question had refused such leniency to a fellow servant (whose debt was much smaller) and had had him thrown into prison. The master was outraged and delivered the unmerciful servant, thought to be shown here nervously clutching his cap, to his jailers to be tortured. As Bikker and others have argued, however, the servant in that story falls to his knees to beg for more mercy from his master (Matthew 18:26), whereas the standing figure in the present composition is better described as listening intently.
The grey hatching, in particular at the left behind the king and in the shaded side of the two middle figures, is by a later hand. This hatching is not included in a second, weaker version that was sold in London in 1967.14 That copy shows that the present sheet has been cut down on all four sides.
Bonny van Sighem, 2000/Jane Shoaf Turner, 2018
C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Handzeichnungen Rembrandts, Haarlem 1906, no. 1172 (as Rembrandt, c. 1650); L. Demonts, ‘L’Album de dessins de Rembrandt donné au Musée du Louvre par M. Bonnat’, Gazette des Beaux-Arts 62 (1920), no. 1, p. 16 (as Rembrandt); W.R. Valentiner, Rembrandt: Die Meisters Handzeichnungen, 2 vols., Stuttgart and elsewhere 1925-34, I (1925), no. 367 (as copy after a drawing by Rembrandt of c. 1650); M.D. Henkel, Catalogus van de Nederlandsche teekeningen in het Rijksmuseum te Amsterdam, I: Teekeningen van Rembrandt en zijn school, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1942, no. 2, and p. 44, under no. 89 (as Barent Fabritius after Rembrandt); W. Sumowski, ‘Nachträge zum Rembrandtjahr 1956’, Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin 7 (1957-58), no. 2, p. 237 (as Barent Fabritius), with additional earlier literature; D. Pont, Barent Fabritius (1624-1673), The Hague 1958 (PhD diss., Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht), p. 153 (as not Barent Fabritius); F.J. Bagolt Watson, with assistance by R.A. Cecil and A.V.B. Norman, Pictures and Drawings: Text with Historical Notes and illustrations (Wallace Collection Catalogues), coll. cat. London 1968 (16th edn.; orig. edn. London 1925), pp. 261-62, repr. (as copy after Rembrandt); O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), p. 386, under no. C 65, and p. 401, under A 92 (possibly as Barent Fabritius); W. Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, 10 vols., New York 1979-92, III (1980), no. 567*, with additional earlier literature, and p. 1230, under no. 564 (as copy after Drost); Sumowski, Gemälde, IV (1983), pp. 2876, 2883, n. 25 (as copy after Drost); H. Adams, ‘If not Rembrandt, then his cousin?’, The Art Bulletin 66 (1984), p. 430, n. 18 (as copy after the Wallace painting); J. Bruyn, ‘Review of W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, vol. I, 1983’, Oud Holland 98 (1984), p. 161, n. 39 (as Barent Fabritius, according to Henkel); P. Schatborn, ‘Tekeningen van Rembrandts leerlingen’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 33 (1985), no. 2, pp. 100-1, fig. 12 (as copy after Drost); W.W. Robinson, ‘Review of P. Schatborn, Drawings by Rembrandt, his Anonymous Pupils and Followers, The Hague 1985’, Kunstchronik 41 (1988), p. 584 (as copy after Drost); M. de Bazelaire and E. Starcky, Rembrandt et son école: Dessins du Musée du Louvre, exh. cat. Paris (Musée du Louvre) 1988-89, p. 110, under no. 112; H. Bevers, P. Schatborn and B. Welzel, Rembrandt, the Master and his Workshop: Drawings and Etchings, exh. cat. Berlin (Kupferstichkabinett) and elsewhere 1991-92, p. 142, under no. 45, n. 3; J. Ingamells, The Wallace Collection: Catalogue of Pictures, 4 vols., coll. cat. London 1985-92, IV (1992), pp. 93-94, under no. P86 (as copy after Drost according to Sumowski); J. Ingamells, Rembrandt 1892: Twelve Paintings: A Century of Changing Perceptions, exh. cat. London (Wallace Collection) 1992, p. 149 (possibly as Drost); M. Royalton-Kisch, Drawings by Rembrandt and his Circle in the British Museum, exh. cat. London 1992, p. 212, under no. 104 (as copy after Drost); J. Bikker, Willem Drost (1633-1659): A Rembrandt Pupil in Amsterdam and Venice, New Haven/London 2005, no. R5C (rejected as Drost); T. Döring, G. Bungarten and C. Pagel, Aus Rembrandts Kreis: Die Zeichnungen des Braunschweiger Kupferstichkabinetts, exh. cat. Braunschweig (Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum) 2006, p. 35, fig. 1 (as attributed to Drost); M. Royalton-Kisch, Catalogue of Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the British Museum, coll. cat. (online 2010), under Willem Drost, no. 4 (c. 1655); J. Shoaf Turner and C. White, Dutch and Flemish Drawings in the Victoria and Albert Museum, coll. cat. London 2014, p. 162, under no. 241; D.A. de Witt, L. van Sloten and J. van der Veen, Rembrandt’s Late Pupils: Studying under a Genius, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2015, no. 68, p. 79, fig. 3.7 (c. 1653)
B. van Sighem, 2000/J. Shoaf Turner, 2018, 'attributed to Willem Drost, The Roman Centurion Cornelius Sending his Men to Joppa, Amsterdam, c. 1653', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.36081
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