Description: Pen and brown ink, greyish-brown wash, 126 x 97 mm. Verso: Man on a throne surrounded by people. Pen and black ink, grey wash. Ruled framing lines in brown ink. Vertical folds. Watermark: Crown (fragment). Chain lines: 25 mm. Inscribed on the verso near the top, in pen and black ink, W.S. (William Sharp). On the verso, in the upper left corner, marks of Sir Joshua Reynolds (Lugt 2364) and the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.

The young man, dressed only in a loincloth, with his hands tied behind his back and kneeling on some kind of a wooden box, looks like a studio model posing for a scene of execution. The sheet has been trimmed, sacrificing the drawing on the verso and leaving only a fragment of a larger composition. The verso shows three old men with beards and turbans, and behind them an old woman. The oriental dress of the men suggests a scene from the Old Testament.

The kneeling figure is reminiscent of the pen drawings Rembrandt made under the influence of his teacher Lastman. The way the head is modelled with short strokes seems alien to Rembrandt, and is perhaps closer to the young Lievens, as in the drawing of Mucius Scaevola in Leiden. However, the drawing on the verso, clearly by the same hand as the recto, does not seem to fit either of these artists, and should perhaps be referred to their common teacher. [Magnusson, Dutch Drawings no. 240]

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