Follower of Bartholomeus Spranger

One of the most compelling sheets in the Ash bequest is a chiaroscuro wash study of Venus and Cupid attributed to Bartholomeus Spranger. It was exhibited in Frankfurt in the summer of 1924 as part of an exhibition organized by Edmund Schilling at the Städel Kunstinstitut, the contents of which were published in a catalogue by Georg Swarzenski. All of the works were borrowed from German collections, mostly privately held. Glaser was thus recognized among other major collectors of old master drawings by the presence of the Spranger, placing him in the company of fellow art historians and industrialists who were enamored of Handzeichnungen. By 1931, the drawing was listed in Albrecht Niederstein's catalogue of Spranger's graphic work as belonging to “Sammlung Professor Glaser, Berlin.” Konrad Oberhuber fully accepted it in his 1958 thesis on the artist and reconfirmed his opinion in 1982; it was also accepted by the renowned Goltzius scholar E.K.J. Reznicek. Since then, however, several experts have expressed some reservations, including Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann and Sally Metzler.^1. Examination of the sheet in 2021 by Austėja Mackelaitė and Stijn Alsteens indicates that it probably is a copy after a lost original by Spranger or by an artist inventing in his manner and active ca. 1600.
Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Central European History, Mar., 1985, Vol. 18, No. 1, The Culture of the Holy Roman Empire, 1540-1680 (March 1985), pp. 70-113, for the Morgan Spranger, listed with a question mark, see p. 106; Sally Metzler, Bartholomeus Spranger, Splendor and Eroticism in Imperial Prague : The Complete Works, 2014, 353, under “Indeterminate works” which “come very close to Spranger's hand, but for which the attribution remains undecided.”