Attributed to Johann Heinrich Roos
(German, 1631–1685)
Study of a Cow, 1650–85
Black chalk, heightened with white
Attributed to Pieter Jacobsz. van Laer
(Dutch, ca. 1592/95–ca. 1642)
Study of a Donkey, 1620–40
Black chalk, pen and brown ink, gray wash
The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Rogers Fund, 1964
Mariette did not share his contemporaries’ taste for Northern drawings and, at times, criticized his fellow collectors’ purchases of expensive sheets representing “drunken people, cowherds, [and] trees.” Yet he aimed to make the scope of his collection encyclopedic, and so, along with his favorite Italian and French drawings, he also acquired sheets by Northern artists. Here he arranged on the same mat two animal studies attributed to a German and a Dutch artist. Mounting the two drawings together was a way to encourage comparisons between the masters’ styles.