Watermark: none.
Copied after Tobias Stimmer, "Neue Künstliche Figuren Biblischer Historien", Basel, 1576, unpaginated: "Job. I. XLII. Der Spigel hailiger gedult; Judith. XII. Durch weiblich schwachait ligt die greulich frechait".
As a teenager and a budding artist, Rubens copied the woodcuts by the Swiss artist Tobias Stimmer in the picture Bible Neue künstliche Figuren Biblischer Historien (PML 78265). At the bottom of this sheet, Rubens recorded Judith reaching for the head of the sleeping Holofernes moments before she decapitated him. Instead of adding hatching to render the setting dark, as in Stimmer's original, Rubens jotted down the words sy taster int donker near (she gropes for it in the dark). From a woodcut elsewhere in the book, he then copied Job's angry wife standing with her arms akimbo. Having run out of space, he completed her dress on the right. -- Exhibition Label, from "Power and Grace: Drawings by Rubens, Van Dyck, and Jordaens"
Inscribed at right center, in brown ink, "sy taster int doncker naer" (she gropes for it in the dark).
Murray, Charles Fairfax, 1849-1919, former owner.
Ezekiel, Victor, former owner.
Koblitz, Baron, former owner.
Schilling, Edmund, 1888-1974, former owner.
Manley, Otto, -1989, former owner.
Tuinen, Ilona van. Power and Grace : Drawings by Rubens, Van Dyck, and Jordaens. New York : Morgan Library & Museum, 2018, no. 1 (repr.)
Stampfle, Felice, with the assistance of Ruth S. Kraemer and Jane Shoaf Turner. Netherlandish Drawings of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries and Flemish Drawings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in the Pierpont Morgan Library. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1991, p. 136-137, no. 294, repr.