費迪南德·伯烏

Cornelis Ploos van Amstel (with his inscriptions, L.3002 and L.3004)
Jacob de Vos Jacobszoon (L.1450)
Probably his sale: Roos et al, Amsterdam, May 22-24, 1883, where acquired by  
William Pitcairn Knowles (L.2643)
Pieter Langerhuizen (L.2095)
Sold: Frederick Muller, Amsterdam, June 15-16, 1926, lot 433 (as Rembrandt)
Robert von Hirsch, Basel
his sale: Sotheby's, London, June 20, 1978, lot 40 (as Rembrandt)
Sold: Sotheby's, London, April 9, 1981, lot 94 (as Rembrandt)
John R. Gaines, Louisville, Kentucky
his sale: Sotheby's, New York, 17 November 1986, lot 18 (as Rembrandt, but with saleroom notice stating that an alternative attribution to Ferdinand Bol had been proposed)

Frankfurt, Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Rembrandt-Ausstellung, 1926, no. 358; 
Bern, Kunstmuseum, Rembrandt-Ausstellung, 1937, no. 187

Wilhelm R. Valentiner, Rembrandt Handzeichnungen, Klassiker der Kunst, Stuttgart (n.d.), p. 304, no. 279, reproduced (as Rembrandt)
H. Kauffmann, Zur Kritik der Rembrandt Zeichnungen, Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft, 47, Berlin 1926, p. 171 (as Rembrandt)
Otto Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt, London 1957, vol. III, no. 480, fig. 601 (as Rembrandt)
Werner Sumowski, Review of Benesch, 1957, op. cit., Bad Pyrmont 1961, p. 8 (as Rembrandt)
Werner Sumowski, Zwei Rembrandt Originale, Pantheon, XII, January/February 1964, p. 33(4) (as Rembrandt)
Otto Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt, London 1973, vol. III, no. 480, fig. 636 (as Rembrandt)
Martin Royalton-Kisch, Drawings by Rembrandt and his Circle in the British Museum, exh. cat., London, British Museum, 1992, p. 97, under no. 35 (as probably by Ferdinand Bol)
Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann et al, Fifteenth- to Eighteenth-Century European Drawings in the Robert Lehman Collection. Central Europe, The Netherlands, France, England, New York/Princeton 1999, pp. 244, note 3, and 246, note 16 (as not by the same hand as the Lehman Collection drawing)
Martin Royalton-Kisch, Catalogue of drawings by Rembrandt and his school, London, British Museum, online catalogue, 2010, Rembrandt, under cat. no.32 (as probably by Ferdinand Bol)

Ink slightly sunk in or two of the darkest places, but overall condition otherwise good and fresh. Paper a little discoloured across the reverse, except for a narrow strip around the edges, where there seem to be slight remains of old mounting strip adhering to the reverse. Sold in a large, 17th-century Dutch style dark wood frame
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

With its complex, dramatic composition, bravura pen-work and profoundly perceptive and moving characterisation of the figures, this is one of the most brilliantly accomplished drawings by Rembrandt’s highly gifted pupil, Ferdinand Bol.  It was most likely made around 1640, during the time when Bol was actually studying with Rembrandt, but although it is clearly inspired by the vision and style of Bol’s great master, the flamboyant technique and considerable emphasis on narrative structure are characteristic of the personal mode of expression that was to become increasingly evident in Bol’s later works, produced after he left the all-enveloping orbit of Rembrandt. 

Having first trained in his native Dordrecht, Bol only entered Rembrandt’s studio in 1636 or '37, at the relatively advanced age of around twenty.  All the same, he stayed for some five years, absorbing with relish all that this febrile artistic environment had to offer as Rembrandt, at the height of his powers, pushed the expressive and technical boundaries of his art, surrounded by an eager group of highly talented pupils that included not only Bol but also artists of the calibre of Govert Flinck, Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, Samuel van Hoogstraten and Carel Fabritius. 

One striking characteristic of Rembrandt’s drawings of the first half of the 1640s is the incredible power and energy of his pen-work, a quality that reached its apogee in drawings such as The Star of Kings, in the British Museum (Benesch 736; Royalton-Kisch, op cit., 1992, no. 44).  Of all his pupils, Bol was the one who reacted most obviously – and most successfully – to this stylistic stimulus, and his drawings, both of this student period and from later in his career, are characterised by great energy of draughtsmanship, with extremely striking, bold, swirling pen strokes often, as here, set off against much more delicately handled passages in faces and other details that are important in the rendering of mood and emotion.  A drawing that is very comparable in these respects is The Holy Family in an Interior (c 1640), in Darmstadt (Hessisches Landesmuseum, inv. AE 592, see Drawings by Rembrandt and His Pupils: Telling the Difference, exh. cat., Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum, 2009-10, p. 101, fig. 12a). Bol also absorbed much of Rembrandt’s genius in the use of light and shade for narrative and dramatic purposes.  Here, the key figures of the kneeling St. John the Baptist and his executioner are set against a deeply shadowed, sunken doorway which is reminiscent of the entrance to Hell, as it appears in much earlier paintings such as Mantegna’s famous The Descent of Christ into Limbo.  Rembrandt also included such an ambiguous, threatening doorway in the revised second version of his print Ecce Homo, though that print was not made until some years later, around 1655. 

Another Rembrandt print must, though, have been a direct source of inspiration for Bol when he was creating this drawing.  In 1640, Rembrandt made a well known etching of The Beheading of St. John the Baptist (fig. 1), and although that print is a smaller scale composition than this, there are enough similarities in the disposition of the main figures to conclude that Bol must have seen it.  What he did with this composition was, though, entirely his own invention, and the quality and inventiveness of the final drawing marks it out as one of the finest, large compositional drawings to emerge from Rembrandt’s studio during the early 1640s.  

Indeed, until the time of the Gaines Collection sale in 1986, the drawing was always considered a major work by Rembrandt himself – Benesch even described it as one of the most important of Rembrandt’s many-figured compositional drawings – but as scholarly understanding of the styles, and the abilities, of Rembrandt’s pupils have come to be increasingly well understood, many drawings of exceptional quality have been recognised as the work of one or other of these pupils, rather than that of Rembrandt.  In 1986, it was proposed that this drawing might instead be by Bol, an attribution that is now accepted by most scholars in the field.

A copy of this drawing is in Besançon (inv. D.2645).