Object data
reed pen and brown and light brown ink (faded), some areas deliberately rubbed with a finger or dry brush, over a sketch in black chalk; framing line in black ink
height 193 mm × width 199 mm
anonymous, after Willem Drost, after Rembrandt van Rijn
Cimon and Pero
after c. 1650 - c. 1655
Inscriptions
Technical notes
Watermark: None
Provenance
...; sale, August Artaria (1807-93, Vienna), Vienna (Artaria), 6 (13) May 1896 sqq., no. 1190, as Imitationen Rembrandt, with 5 other drawings, unsold;1 …; sale, Anton Wilhelmus Mari Mensing (1866-1936, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (F. Muller), 27 April 1937 sqq., no. 869, fl. 210, with 44 other drawings, to the museum
Object number: RP-T-1937-77
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
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.
Entry
The aged Cimon is imprisoned and sentenced to death by starvation. His exemplary daughter Pero is allowed to visit him, and she nourishes him from her own breast. A guard spies on them through the bars. This classical story is known as caritas romana or Roman Charity, and symbolizes children’s devotion to and honouring of parents; it was also used in an erotic sense (Valerius Maximus V, 4).
The drawing, which was catalogued by Sumowski as a copy after Rembrandt, shows characteristics with the drawing style of Drost, such as the parallel hatching in different directions. However, the overall appearance of the drawing is weak; for example, the figures are constructed primarily with contour lines and lack three-dimensional form. This led Schatborn to suggest that the drawing might be a copy after a lost original by Drost.5 There are two other versions of this copy after Drost. The quality of a drawing in the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (inv. no. 23.12.45) is higher, but is still unlikely to be the original.6 Another copy was auctioned in Munich in 1979.7
What is presumably the lost original apparently served as a preliminary drawing for a painting of the same subject by Drost that was recently auctioned in New York.8 The painting can probably be dated to the beginning of the artist’s stay in Venice, circa 1655-1657, which suggests that Drost took the drawing that he had made in Rembrandt’s studio to Italy. After his untimely death in Venice a few years later, the sheet probably got lost. There are, however, a few differences between the drawing and the painting. The format of the painting is vertical and depicts only the two figures (in reverse), whereas the guard peeking through the bars and the interior of the prison cell are no longer visible. The practise of translating a horizontal drawing to a vertical painting, while omitting the background and concentrating more on the figures, can also be found in other cases within Drost’s oeuvre.9
The inscription on the verso of the drawing refers to two etchings of Cimon and Pero that Bernard Picart (1673-1733) made after models that he thought to be by Rembrandt (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-51.817 and RP-P-OB-51.814).10 These prints were published after Picart’s death in the series Impostures innocentes (Amsterdam 1734).11 Other than the similarity of the representation, there is no connection between Picart’s prints and this copy after Drost.
Bonny van Sighem, 2000/Marleen Ram, 2018
Literature
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. 120 (as pupil of Rembrandt); W. Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, 10 vols., New York 1979-92, V (1981), p. 2648, under no. 1194x (as copy after Rembrandt); P. Schatborn, Catalogus van de Nederlandse tekeningen in het Rijksprentenkabinet, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, IV: Tekeningen van Rembrandt, zijn onbekende leerlingen en navolgers/Drawings by Rembrandt, his Anonymous Pupils and Followers, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1985, p. 101 (as possible copy after Drost)
Citation
B. van Sighem, 2000/M. Ram, 2018, 'anonymous, Cimon and Pero, after c. 1650 - c. 1655', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.36096
(accessed 14 November 2024 18:42:29).