(Siegen 1577–1640 Antwerp)
An old woman examining a coin,
oil on panel, 57.8 x 43 cm, framed

Provenance:
Collection of Baron Gérad Hubert Leon Janssens (1849–1923), Brussels;
his sale, Frederick Muller, Amsterdam, 26 April 1923, lot 55;
Private collection, Belgium

Literature:
W. Martin, Catalogue de la collection de peintures du Baron Janssen, Brussels/Paris 1923, p. 80, cat. no. 55, ill. (as Attributed to Jordaens);
N. van Hout, Study Heads: Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, Part XX, 2, Turnhout 2021, pp. 197-198, under cat. no. 76, copy (1)

The present vividly rendered study of an old lady examining a coin is a fluent example of the practice within Peter Paul Rubens’s workshop of pupils repeating the master’s tronies, both as an exercise, and to assist with rendering the heads of figures in larger compositions. The present work appears to be after a lost prototype by Rubens, but one that was re-used by the master for the figure of the old lady in his Lamentation with Saint Francis from circa 1619–1620, now conserved in the Musée de Beaux-Arts, Brussels. A related study, attributed to the young Anthony van Dyck by Ludwig Burchard and dated by him to circa 1619, is in the collection of the Phoebus Foundation in Antwerp.

A black and white photograph of the supposed prime tronie is in the archives of the Rubenianum in Antwerp. Nico van Hout, author of the upcoming Study Heads: Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, Part XX, 2 (see literature) notes that the photo ‘shows painting of a high quality so one cannot rule out the old attribution to Rubens’.

Once thought to be a work by Jacob Jordaens, the present panel has since been removed from that master’s suggested oeuvre due to the uncharacteristically vigorous impastos highlighting the wrinkled flesh beneath the old lady’s eye, which instead suggest another, as yet unidentified hand from within the accomplished atelier of Rubens.