Circle of Pieter Coecke van Aelst (Aalst 1502-1550 Brussels)

Although most of the drawings by Pieter Coecke van Aelst (many of them designs for tapestries) are executed in a more firmly delineated, less pictorial manner, some of his looser sketches or background scenes are quite comparable to the present work, among them a sheet at the Frits Lugt Collection, Paris, and one in a private collection (S. Alsteens, ‘The drawings of Pieter Coecke van Aelst’, Master Drawings, LII, no. 3, Fall 2014, nos. A3, A24, A27, figs. 65, 7, 12, 12a). There are too many differences in style to allow an attribution of the Bonna drawing to him, but it seems quite certain that the author should be looked for in the circle of artists who were inspired by him and his direct exposure to Italian art. The drawing can be dated to the 1530s or 1540s, when Netherlandish artists first started depicting classic texts, in this case Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Particularly appealing and innovative in the North is also the combination of the swirly penmanship and the painterly use of bodycolour.