Though previously described as an image of Flora
, this drawing clearly represents the figure of Ceres, goddess of agriculture, with her traditional attributes of cornucopia and sickle (the latter seen here by her feet). Though in reverse, and nude, rather than draped, the figure bears a more than passing resemblance to the image of Ceres in Jan Saenredam's 1596 print after a design by Hendrick Goltzius.1
Joost vander Auwera already suggested that Jordaens looked at this well known print when conceiving his own early painting, Homage to Ceres,
in the Prado2
, and it is entirely possible that the present, unpublished drawing also relates to the development of this painted composition. The Prado painting is believed to have been executed around 1624-25, a plausible dating, stylistically, for the present drawing, as it is mainly in his early drawings that Jordaens combined black chalk and brown wash in the manner seen here.
1. Hollstein 69; Jordaens and the Antique, exhib. cat., Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, and Kassel, Museum Fridericianum, 2012-13, pp. 184-5, no. 70, reproduced
2. Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, inv. PO15470; Jordaens and the Antique, exhib. cat., op. cit., pp. 182-3, no. 69