ATTRIBUTED TO PIETER COECKE VAN AELST THE ELDER | RECTO: CROWDS IN SUPPLICATION BEFORE A MILITARY LEADER (CAESAR?) VERSO: CHRIST CARRYING THE CROSS

This intriguing double sided sheet bears a striking resemblance, primarily through the recto, to the graphic style of the Flemish painter, sculptor and engraver, Pieter Coecke van Aelst. Coecke is known to have produced numerous designs for a well documented series of grand-scale tapestries depicting scenes from the life of Julius Caesar¹ and though the present work cannot be directly connected to any surviving work from this project, the subject matter and elaborate narrative composition are entirely consistent with those that do.

Stylistically the present work can be most closely compared to a drawing depicting an Ecce Homo in the collection of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam,² which is itself part of a group of at least four drawings from a "Passion" series that also includes Christ before Caiaphas and Christ crowned with Thorns.³ Strong similarities can be drawn between the highly distinctive facial type of the figure kneeling before Caesar and a similar man located in the centre of the Boijmans drawing, whilst the languid dogs, included in the centre foreground of both works are also comparable.

A second surviving sheet by Coecke that also shares many stylistic affinities with the more sketchily drawn figures in our drawing, depicting Esther before Ahasuerus, is in the collection of the Muzeum Narodowe, Warsaw.⁴

1. For a discussion of this project see E. Cleland et al., Grand Design. Pieter Coecke van Aelst and Renaissance Tapestry, exhib. cat., New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2014, pp. 254-265

2. See Bosch to Bloemaert: Early Netherlandish Drawings in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, exhib. cat., Paris, Fondation Custodia, Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, and Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art, 2014, pp. 70-1, no. 16, reproduced

3. Ibid.

4. Cleland et al., op. cit., p. 292, fig. 207, reproduced