Design for a frontispiece

This drawing exhibits a confident and accomplished hand that can be placed within the circle of Abraham Bloemaert. Its inscription, seemingly rendered in the same brown ink as the rest of the drawing, reads "VV [Vive] le roi," a phrase that became especially popular during the reigns of the French kings Henri IV (1572-1610) and Louis XIII (1610-1643). The drawing was presumably intended as a design for a print (possibly but not certainly a frontispiece) featuring a portrait of one of these monarchs within the cartouche, on either side of which appear personifications of Abundance and Fame. Although no such print has yet been identified, similar pictorial language appears in a 1626 portrait of Louis XIII by Crispijn de Passe I after Rubens. The sheet may well date to the period after 1617, when Louis XIII exiled his mother, Marie de Medici, thus ending her regency and marking his assumption of power.