Crispijn de Passe the Elder

Exhibited by Nicolaas Teeuwisse OHG

Material Pen and brown ink

Dimensions 11.8 x 13 cm

Status Vetted

About the Work

The outstanding feature of this delightful work, which has been executed in a sketchy, although confident and accurate manner, is the subtlety of the artist’s powers of psychological observation. The gentleman gently touches the left breast of the pretty, elegantly dressed young woman. The pair are snuggled up close to each other, but the expression on the face of the man’s beloved betrays a certain consternation - an impression underlined by her anxiously outstretched arm.

The drawing is closely related to an engraving from the series of Five Senses by Willem de Passe after designs by his father (Hollstein 31). The present drawing is in all likelihood a prima idea. The man’s head with his fashionable goatee beard and the gesture of his hand are identical, but the woman’s pose is slightly different, her left hand warding off the advances of her admirer in a gesture of shame. The drawing probably arose around 1600. One of Crispijn’s drawings showing couples dancing and playing music has a comparable female figure with an identical lace collar on the extreme left, while the gentleman on the right is also strikingly similar to the protagonist in the present work. See K.G. Boon, Netherlandish Drawings of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries in the Rijksmuseum, vol. I, p. 141, no. 390; vol. II, fig. p. 149. The present, sensitively treated, characteristic sheet testifies to the high quality of Crispijn’s draughtsmanship at this stage of his career.

Show moreless