Ordination. Verso: Another study for the Ordination

This double sided sheet of studies, seemingly containing preliminary sketches for an Ordination scene, has long posed a problem to scholars. Blunt considered it first a copy before accepting it as a study for Ordination in Poussin's first series of the Sacraments (ca. 1638; now National Galleries of Scotland). Rosenberg and Prat provide a compelling list of stylistic reasons why the sheet is not by Poussin and raise the question of how Nicholas Lanier, a contemporary of Poussin, could have been fooled by the sheet, which also bears an inscription attributing it to Giulio Campi. They suggest that it could be the work of the master "pasticheur" Michel II Corneille.