Inscribed on the album page, below the design, in brown ink, "Tútè, si rectè vixeris (title) / Qúid qúisqúe vitet núnquam homini satis / Caútum est in horas, naúta Bosphorúm / Poenús perhorrescit, neqúe últrà / Coeca timet aliúndè fata. / Miles sagittas et celerem fúgam, / Parthi catenas Parthús et italúm. / Robur, sed improvisa lethi / Vis rapúit rapietque gentes" (Man never heeds enough from hour to hour what he should shun. The Punic sailor dreads Bosphorus, but fears not the unseen fates beyond that threaten from other quarters. The soldier dreads the arrow of the Parthians and their swift retreat; the Parthian fears the chains and rugged strength of Italy; but the fatal violence that has snatched away, and again will snatch away, the tribes of men, is something unforeseen). The text is from Horace, "Odes", Book II, 13, lines 13-20.
Netherlandish drawings of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and Flemish drawings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the Pierpont Morgan Library / Felice Stampfle ; with the assistance of Ruth S. Kraemer and Jane Shoaf Turner. New York : The Library, 1991, p. 95, no. 201.
Watermark: since the drawings are laid down, no watermarks, if any, are visible, even with fiber-optic light.
Engraved in reverse, 1607.
Also see records on Van Veen Album (III, 146-157).