Catharina Behagel

The cartouche of the blue mount made for the drawing by the eighteenth-century French collector Pierre-Jean Mariette attributes the sheet to Van Dyck. The focus on the pose and costume of the lady, rather than on her face, is indeed comparable to many of Van Dyck’s surviving chalk studies for portraits from the 1630s. However, the more regular, controlled style points to Van Dyck’s great contemporary Jacob Jordaens, who made the drawing in preparation for a painted portrait of the wife of a wealthy Antwerp merchant.