Description: Black chalk, pen and brown ink, grey wash, 190 x 246 mm. Verso: Two studies of a hand with upturned palm, red chalk (visible against the light). Ruled framing lines in black ink. Several vertical and horizontal folds. Red chalk has rubbed off on the surface of the upper left part of the drawing. Laid down, no watermark. Chain lines: 27 mm. Inscribed on the old mount, to the left, Lairesse, and numbered to the right, 1966 (Sparre), in pen and brown ink. Mark of the Royal Collection (Lugt 1638).

Lairesse treated the subject of Cain and Abel in a series of etchings. In one of them, Cain’s Remorse, the slain Abel is lying on the ground in a similar position. The size of the drawing matches the prints, but the preserved drawings for the series are done in a different manner. The drawing is close in style to one in the British Museum, with the same tidy outlines and precise brushwork in defining the anatomy (inv. 1943.1113.72). The tidiness of the drawing might suggest a copy, but on the other hand the finished drawing does not slavishly follow the underlying, summary chalk sketch and the pen lines are drawn without hesitation. 

Tessin listed this as the first of four drawings by Lairesse that he acquired in Paris, and it was given preferential treatment in the Royal Museum, where the biography of the artist was added to the sheet it was mounted on. Clearly, it met the taste for finished drawings. [Magnusson, Dutch Drawings no. 237]

Adam och Eva vid Abels döda kropp