Description: Black chalk on vellum, 172 x 146 mm. The drawing is on a rectangular piece of vellum, the upper corners of which have been washed brown to create an arched top. Strips of vellum, coloured black, serve as framing lines. Numbered in the lower left corner, in pen and brown ink, 7.9. Inscribed at the lower right, in black chalk, Rinbran(...). This inscription has been interpreted, anonymously, on the mount as liewen / 1658. The R in Rembrandt has clearly been superimposed over other letters. Its downstroke is parallel to a thinner line that ends in a wide curve, similar to the L in the signature of Johannes Leupenius; the “IL” of his signature could have been transformed into an R.

The worn surface makes a judgement difficult. As Snickare (Stockholm 1992) has pointed out, the portrait type is similar to a portrait of a man painted by Ferdinand Bol in the mid 1640s. The model is leaning against a low wall flanked by columns. In both cases he wears the same sumptuous dress and a beret with a large plume. Snickare compares this portrait with early self-portraits by Jan Lievens in Edinburgh.  

There is some affinity with Lievens’s portraits in chalk, such as the treatment of the dress and the hand in his portrait of Huygens in London.  However, the manner is drier, not least the rendering of the architecture, and an attribution to Lievens’s follower Leupenius should be considered. [Magnusson, Dutch Drawings no. 243]

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Johannes Leupenius | Självporträtt med barett | Nationalmuseum

Johannes Leupenius | Portrait of a Young Man in a Beret | Nationalmuseum

Foto: Hans Thorwid / Nationalmuseum, CC BY SA 