The surviving body of Bloemaert’s drawings, which greatly outnumbers those of his contemporary artists, shows him to have been a fervent draughtsman.  Drawings of all kinds exist, from figure sketches and head and limb studies to landscapes and views of vernacular architecture. There are refined compositions and finished presentation drawings and all this work was kept in the studio in huge albums which remained with the family, intact, for most of a century after Bloemaert’s death. It appears that Bloemaert used these volumes in the manner of source books and Jaap Bolten compares this to the practice of Rembrandt who, similarly, had a large studio and a wish to educate (1).  Bloemaert was an active member of the Utrecht Guild of St Luke and one of the founding members of the Utrecht Drawing Academy. Baldinucci described his position as a member of the artistic establishment: `In the years after 1611, the Utrecht school of painting would flourish and Bloemart’s role as pedagogue in this period of blossoming can hardly be over-estimated.' (2)

The composition of this animated drawing leads from the foreground through a series of gestures up to the ceremonial table, the two priests with the Christ Child lit by a tall, fast burning altar candle. The Virgin Mary kneels to the right, hands reaching out as if to protect her child, the male figure at centre seems also to be calming or silencing, as if a crowd has gathered below the steps.  These framing figures with their extravagant reactions, often seen from the back, appear repeatedly in Bloemart’s early compositions and are an emblematic device of the period, seen particularly in works of the Prague school. As Marcel Roethlisberger pointed out, the foreground figure of a woman, cut by the edge of the drawing is similar in type to one in the print of the Adoration of the Shepherds, engraved by Matham, for which a preparatory drawing is now known in the Fogg Art Museum. (3)  Though more worked up, the Harvard drawing, shares the same technique and  has a similar scale of figures and openness of composition to the present work. Another very comparable male figure with arms outstretched is found in the foreground of the Christ and the Woman with an Issue of Blood, signed and dated 1595, now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. (4)

In his cataloguing for the present drawing, Roethlisberger pointed out a record of a similarly square painting of the same subject in the sale of Maas de Groot, The Hague, 22 December 1924, lot 34 but as this has not been traced, the two cannot be securely linked; indeed it appears that much of Bloemaert’s output prior to 1604 has been lost. (5) The numerous chalk figures sketched in behind the priests suggest that the scene was to be a crowded one, the crowds described in the background and suggested in the foreground. The inscribed date of 1601 fits well on stylistic grounds although Jaap Bolten has suggested that it was added – presumably by the artist -  at a later time than the signature. A further comparison can be made on stylistic grounds with the sketch for the devotional image of the Madonna and Christ Child with SS. Catherine and Agnes dated 1597, now in the National Gallery of Ottowa (6).