Dirck Pietersz. Crabeth

Sale, Amsterdam, Christie's, 30 November 1987, lot 5;
Jacobus A. Klaver, Amsterdam  

Amsterdam, Rijksprentenkabinet, Tekeningen van oude meesters. De verzameling Jacobus A. Klaver, 1993 (catalogue by Marijn Schapelhouman and Peter Schatborn), no. 1

E. Bénézit, Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs et graveurs..., Paris 1999, p. 62 (under entry for Crabeth)

Unframed. Window mounted. There are losses at the left-hand and upper right corners, all neatly repaired on the verso. Also a small, repaired, loss to the centre of the left edge, and four small worm-like holes across the right-hand side. An old vertical fold just to the right of the centre, and a little surface dirt at the edges of the sheet. The ink, however, is still strong and the drawing does give a very strong impression.
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This large, powerful study is arguably the most important drawing still in private hands by Dirck Crabeth, one of the leading designers of glass and tapestries working in the north Netherlands during the mid-16th century.  The artist's early history is a little uncertain, although his work is first influenced by that of Jan Swart van Groningen and later by Frans Floris.  He is thought to have travelled to Italy, but any such journey must have been made during the earlier part of his career, as he is recorded in the city archives of Gouda from 1545 until his death in 1574.

Crabeth's earliest recorded work is a window made for the Catharijneconvent, Utrecht, in 1540.  His most significant surviving project from this period was, however, a commission that he received in 1543 from a secular patron, Adriaen Dircxz. van Crimpen, for a series of eight panels for his still-extant house in Leiden, 9 Pieterskerkgracht.  The windows are now in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, and five of Crabeth's working drawings for the windows' central scenes also survive, in Leiden, Amsterdam, Paris and a Dutch private collection.¹  These drawings are broadly comparable in style to the present work, with its emphatic outlines and ordered, geometric use of space. 

Although the Klaver drawing cannot be connected with any known glass panel, it must surely also be a design for such a work.  The greatest ensemble of drawings by the two Crabeths, Dirck and Wouter, is the unique surviving set of actual size cartoons for the windows in the Sint Janskerk, Gouda, executed between 1555 and 1574, but these cartoons are, of course, all very much larger in scale than the present drawing.²  Much closer in style, as Marijn Scapelhouman and Peter Schatborn noted in the 1993 exhibition catalogue, are four smaller drawings in Paris and Amsterdam,³ which must have formed part of a more extensive series of designs for glass panels illustrating the theme of the Journey of Man.  The drawing from this group in the Lugt collection is particularly close in style to the present Annunciation.⁴  All these drawings must date from around 1560.

The text inscribed on the background wall is from Luke 1:48-49.  Originating from the Magnificat, this text was used by the Evangelist in his account of Mary's response, following the Visitation. 

1.  See T.B. Husband, The Luminous Image, Painted Glass in the Lowlands, 1480-1560, exhibition catalogue, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1995, pp. 198-206
2.  See Z. van Ruyven-Zeman et al., Het Geheim van Gouda. De cartons van de Goudse Glazen, exh. cat., Gouda, Museum het Catharina Gasthuis, 2002
3.  Paris, Fondation Custodia (F. Lugt Collection), inv. 3950; Paris, Ecole des Beaux-Arts, inv. M 698 & M 699; Amsterdam, Rijksprentenkabinet, inv. 1960:175
4.  See K.G. Boon, The Netherlandish and German Drawings of the XVth and XVIth Centuries of the Frits Lugt Collection, 3 vols., Paris 1992, vol. I, pp. 106-9, cat. 63, reproduced vol. III, pl. 57