Jörg Breu

Watermark: none.
A drawing of the same subject by Jörg Breu the Younger is in the collection of the Morgan (acc. no. 1978.38).
The source of the scene depicted is Herodotus 5.111-13. Jörg Breu could have known the passage from a German translation of Herodotus, published in Augsburg in 1535--Cf. Schneider.
This drawing was formerly attributed to the Nuremberg artist Virgil Solis (1514-1562 Nuremberg), on account of the later - albeit false - monogram it bears. Yet the style and handling, in particular the razor-sharp pen line, differ from Solis's known works and are so similar to a series of drawings depicting rulers by Breu that it seems more likely that the work is by Breu instead, and it served as the model for 1978.38.