Hoofd van man met baard, in profiel naar links Possibly 1607

This is a drawing in pen and brown ink made in 1607 by Cornelis van der Voort, a Dutch Golden Age painter. The sketch is a portrait of a bearded man and it's a typical example of the kind of study an artist would make in preparation for a larger history painting or group portrait. What’s interesting is that the inscription at the top of the work tells us that it was made by Cornelis van der Voort. Another inscription at the bottom tells us that it was made in October 1607, and the letters ‘Adj 10’ indicate that it might have been copied or re-drawn after an original. These inscriptions give us an insight into the institutional history of the artwork. It was common practice for artists to copy the work of others, and for drawings and prints to be collected in albums and print rooms. The inscriptions on this drawing tell us something about its reception. Historians would want to research the provenance of the drawing. By looking at the handwriting styles of the inscriptions and comparing them to other documents from the period we could learn a lot about the context in which the artwork was made.