Jacob's Ladder

The present composition relates to a larger work by Ferdinand Bol in the Gemäldegalerie, Dresden (inv. no. 1604) which dates to circa 1642, shortly after his apprenticeship with Rembrandt came to an end. The artist also reprises the gold headband worn by the angel in Gideon's Sacrifice (Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht) of around the same date. However, Dr. Albert Blankert, who confirmed the present work's attribution to Bol prior to the 2010 sale, proposed that it was executed later than these, drawing stylistic parallels with Bol's Hagar and the Angel in Gdansk of circa 1650 (Muzeum Pomorskie), and with oil sketches for the figure of Fabritius in the Pyrrhus and Fabritius painted for the Amsterdam City Hall in 1656. He also pointed to the foliage of the tree at right, which only appears in his work from the 1650s onwards.

The present work is generally more consistent stylistically with Bol's technique in the 1650s and 1660s, for by this time, he had moved away from Rembrandt's influence towards a more classicising aesthetic. His formerly ethereal figures became less weightless and more firmly modelled, and his colour palette broadened. Its reduced size and still slightly loose technique led Blankert to propose that it may have been an oil sketch for a further treatment of the subject, which was either lost or never realised.