A kneeling shepherd

Dating from around 1603, this is probably a preparatory study for a lost picture of The Adoration of the Shepherds. Two other drawings show the same model in the same costume, with the same staff and adopting different poses: the first was formerly in the collection of A. Schmid (van Regteren Altena 1983, op. cit., no. 31), showing the kneeling youth seen from the front, while the second is in a study of Three figures in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (van Regteren Altena 1983, op. cit., no. 30). The latter drawing, which is executed in black chalk, shows a very similar style of execution to that in the present work; and a date for the group can be suggested on the basis of a print, dated 1603, which includes a standing figure taken from the Rijksmuseum drawing (K.G. Boon, Netherlandish Drawings of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries in the Rijksmuseum, The Hague, 1978, no. 216). On the basis of the model’s distinctive haircut, van Regteren Altena suggested that he is the same boy who had posed, a few years earlier in 1600, for the figure of the groom in de Gheyn’s picture of The white stallion (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; van Regteren Altena 1983, op. cit., no. P15).