Watermark: since the drawings are laid down, no watermarks, if any, are visible, even with fiber-optic light.
Engraved in reverse, 1607.
Also see records on Van Veen Album (III, 146-157).
Inscribed on the album page below the design, and continued on the opposite page, in brown ink, "Avarus nisi cum moritúr nihil rectè facit (title; possibly proverb by Publilius Syrus)/ Paúper Opimiús argenti positi intus et aúri,/ Qui Vejentanúm festis potare diebus,/ Campana solitús trúlla vappamqúe profestis/ Qúondam lethargo grandi est oppressus, ut haeres/ Iam circúm locúlos et claves laetus ovansqúe/ Cúrreret, húnc Medicús múltum celer atque fidelis/ Excitat hoc pacto, mensam poni jubet, atque/ Effúndi saccos númmorúm, accedere plures/ Ad númerandum, hominem sic erigit, addit et illud/ Ni túa cústodis avidús jam haec aúferet heres./ Men' vivo? út vivas igitur vigilia, hoc age. Quid vis?/ Deficient inopem venae te nie cibus atque/ Ingens accedat stomacho fultura rúenti./ Tú cessas? agedúm súme hoc ptisanariúm oryzae/ Quanti emtae? parvo, qúanti ergo? octo assibus, eheú/ Qúid refert morbo, an fúrtis, pereamne rapinis./ Qúisnam igitur sanús? qúi non stúltus./ Quid avarus?/ Stúltus et insanus (Opimius, a poor man for all his gold and silver hoarded up within, would on holidays, from ladle of Campanian ware, drink wine of Veii, and on working days soured wine. Now once he fell into a lethargy so deep that already his heir was running in joy and triumph round about his keys and coffers. But his physician, a man of quick wit and a loyal friend, revives him by this device. He has a table brought in and bags of coins poured out, and bids many near to count it. Thus he brings the man to, and adds, "Unless you guard your wealth, your greedy heir will be off with it forthwith." "What, while I'm alive?" "Well, if you mean to live, wake up. Come now!" "What would you have me do?" "You are weak, and your veins will fail you, unless food and strong support are given your sinking stomach. Do you hold back? Come now, take this drop of rice-gruel." "What's the cost?" "Oh, a trifle." "How much, I say?" "Eight pence." "Alack! what matters it, whether I die by sickness, or by theft and robbery?" "Who then is sane?" He who is no fool. "What of the covetous?" He is fool and madman.) The text is from Horace, "Satires", Book II, 3, lines 142-161.
Netherlandish drawings of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and Flemish drawings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the Pierpont Morgan Library / Felice Stampfle ; with the assistance of Ruth S. Kraemer and Jane Shoaf Turner. New York : The Library, 1991, p. 84, no. 166.