Study of legs, and the torso of a boy

Unknown artist

The painter Bloemaert ‘tried out‘ several body parts on this sheet in order to use them later in a larger composition. This kind of drawing belonged to a repertoire of motifs that the artist had accumulated in the course of many years of study. Bloemaert used the figure of the boy in a painting of John the Baptist Preaching (Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig).