Young Woman at a Balustrade

This captivating young woman rests her arm on a balustrade, her loose, wavy hair and dress evoking 16th-century Italian portraits of courtesans. Using red and black chalk, the artist skillfully distinguished the dark gray of the background from the deep black of the sitter's dress and the light gray of her eyes. Leaving the reserve of the paper to create the highlights on the woman's skin and parts of her dress, he applied red to imitate the color of lips and cheeks.

This is a ricordo, a drawn record of another work of art. Jan made highly finished drawings after paintings produced by himself, or his father and brothers, with the intention of storing these sheets in a family archive. The "SB" inscribed above the woman's left shoulder indicates that the drawing is a copy after a painting by Salomon de Bray (1597 -1664), Jan's father. He also signed the sheet, indicating that it is a complete and independent work of art.