JAN DE BISSCHOP (Amsterdam 1628-1671 The Hague)

The two groups of men depicted here are drawn after Roman antique reliefs, which De Bisschop, who never travelled to Italy, knew from prints and drawings (R.E. Jellema and M. Plomp, Episcopius. Jean de Bisschop (1628-1671). Lawyer and Draughtsman, exhib. cat., Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis, 1992, p. 22). The left portion is copied after plate 42 of François Perrier’s Icones et segmenta illustrium e marmore tabularum (1645), reproducing a relief on the Arch of Constantine. A group of similar drawings by De Bisschop, also after Perrier, are in an album at the Victoria and Albert Museum (J. Turner in Catalogue of Dutch and Flemish Drawings in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2014, I, nos. 23.22-23.140).