Jaap Bolten questioned whether the present drawing could be connected with a painted portrait of the emperor Domitian by Abraham Bloemaert for a series devoted to the first twelve Roman emperors, a collaborative project that dates to 1616-25 (Bolten, Abraham Bloemaert, c. 1565-1651. The Drawings, Leiden, 2007, vol. 1, 588). That portrait, however, is a bust-length profile view and does not seem to be related to the Morgan sketch. Bolten notes that the format of the drawing is closer to Aegidius Sadeler's ca. 1593 suite of prints after a series of paintings of Roman emperors by Titian and Bernardino Campi. While Bolten remarked that the “handling of the pen is unusual” for the artist, the use of abbreviated strokes and a fluid wash over a substantial underdrawing in black chalk is found in Bloemaert's drawings from the 1630s.
Watermark: pot with two handles and tulip with leaves arising from it. (Heawood 3671: Middelburg and Haarlem 1633). Watermark, beta radiograph. pot two handles, foliage, tulip, heart. 128130wm_1981_35_WM_beta.jpg
Inscribed on verso, in graphite, "Bloemart fec"; numbered at lower left, "10".
Glaser, Curt, 1879-1943, former owner.
Ash, Ernest, Mrs., former owner.
Stampfle, Felice, with the assistance of Ruth S. Kraemer and Jane Shoaf Turner. Netherlandish Drawings of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries and Flemish Drawings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in the Pierpont Morgan Library. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1991, p. 20, no. 33.
Ryskamp, Charles, ed. Twentieth Report to the Fellows of the Pierpont Morgan Library, 1981-1983. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1984, p. 238.