Study of legs, feet, and a young man leaning 1574 - 1651

Abraham Bloemaert made this study of legs, feet and a young man leaning, using red chalk. The sketch gives us a glimpse into the pedagogical practices of the Dutch Golden Age. It’s likely that this study was part of Bloemaert’s training regime at his Utrecht studio. A Northern European artist, Bloemaert traveled to Paris as a teenager, where he would have first been exposed to the Italian Renaissance style and academic figure drawing, which informs this work. The Rijksmuseum has a large collection of Dutch Golden Age drawings, many of which were model books used to train students in the fundamentals of figure drawing. These artists were influenced by the Italian Renaissance tradition of copying classical sculptures and drawings to learn anatomy and proportion. As historians, we can draw on the resources of institutional collections like the Rijksmuseum to understand how art was taught, produced, and consumed in the 17th century. Art is always contingent on its social and institutional context.