Description: Red and white chalk, on brown paper, 404 x 253 mm. The traces of white chalk are very faint. No watermark. Chain lines: 20–25 mm. Inscribed in the lower right corner, Blomaert, numbered at the bottom centre 62 (struck out) and to the right 1707 (Sparre), in pen and brown ink.

Bolten accepts the attribution to Bloemaert with certain reservations, noting the similarity with the heads in the Cambridge Album, engraved by Frederick Bloemaert in the Tekenboek on fols. 8, 9, 12 and 13.  The heads have a strong expressive quality, with marked features. With their Mannerist quality, they show a strong affinity to Bloemaert’s contemporary Cornelis van Haarlem. The upturned face in the centre comes very close to that of the man in the foreground of the painting The Flood in Yale, probably painted during the first half of the 1590s.  

The drawing has the character of a direct study of a live model, and it is natural that it should differ in manner from figures arranged and redrawn as model sheets, or sketches for draperies and figures intended for specific compositions, as seen in the previous drawings. The tradition of attribution is strong. The present drawing belongs to the group of studies of heads and other parts of the human body which Nicodemus Tessin the Younger acquired, probably when travelling through the Netherlands in 1687. It was inherited by Carl Gustaf Tessin en bloc (livre 18, nos. 59–62), and passed into the Royal Collection. [Magnusson, Dutch Drawings no. 44]

Foto: Erik Cornelius / Nationalmuseum 2009

Titel (sv): Åtta studier av manshuvuden
Titel (en): Eight Studies of Young Men's Heads
Titel i inventariet (sv): Etuder. Diverse hufvuden
Titel (fr): Huit études de têtes de jeunes hommes