CC BY-SA 4.0 Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main

Naer het leven

Roelant Savery, 1603 — 1613
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

This drawing of two Jewish scholars was drawn from life, or naer het leven, as is inscribed along the lower edge of the sheet. It belongs to a group of approximately 80 figure studies, also including peasants, beggars, cavalrymen and horses, which Roelant Savery observed at Bohemian markets between 1603 and 1609, when he was in Prague at the court of the Habsburg Emperor Rudolf II. Savery was particularly interested in costume, and the drawings feature superb examples of central and eastern European dress across various strata of society. In the drawing of the two Jewish scholars, he used short parallel strokes to evoke the texture of fur hats, and he added notes about color in Dutch, describing, for example, the red stripes on the white shawl. This remarkable group of drawings belongs to the earliest documented example of drawing from life in northern Europe. The figure drawings functioned as a storeroom of ideas. Several of their figures and costumes reappear as vignettes in his finished drawings and paintings.

Olenka Horbatsch, Assistant Keeper, Dutch and Flemish Prints and Drawings before 1880, British Museum, London

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The Star of David and Jewish Culture in Prague ca. 1600, Reflected in Drawings by Roelandt Savery and Paulus van Vianen

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