Watermark: fragment of a shield.
The drawing belongs to a series of illustrations of the Old Testament that Gerard Hoet the Elder made for the monumental Bible of François Halma (1653-1722), which was published in five languages in Amsterdam in 1709. The engravings by Joseph Mulder (b. 1659 or 1660) after Hoet's preliminary drawings in Halma's Bible re-appeared, along with engravings after designs by Arnold Houbraken (1660-1719) and Bernard Picart (1673-1733), in the three-volume "Taferelen der voornaamste geschiedenissen van het Oude en Nieuwe Testament" by Jacques Saurin (1677-1730), published by Pieter de Hondt in Antwerp and The Hague between 1728 and 1736. Both this drawing and 1990.1 appeared in Saurin's Bible, the latter on p. 524 of vol. I, and the present sheet on p. 105 of vol. II.
Inscribed on the verso, at lower left, in brown ink, " No["o" in superscript]- i489"; at lower center, in graphite, "G. Hoet fec."; at lower right, also in graphite (partially erased), "G. Hoet"; and at lower right corner, in blue ink, "Z.2132" (encircled).
Meerdervoort, J. D. Pompe van, former owner.
Huysum, Jan van, 1682-1749, former owner.
Denison, Cara D., and Helen B. Mules, with the assistance of Jane V. Shoaf. European Drawings, 1375-1825. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1981, no. 46, repr.
Jane Shoaf Turner, with contributions by Felice Stampfle, Dutch Drawings in the Pierpont Morgan Library: Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries, New York, 2006, cat. no. 384.