Resumen de Paintings by Willem Drost in the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg
An analysis of paintings by, or attributable to, the artist Willem Drost, and now in the collection of the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia. Drost was one of Rembrandt's most mysterious pupils, and his painting The prophetess Anna instructing a child (circa 1654), reveals his profound understanding of his teacher's style. It is the earliest and most important of the works by Drost in the museum's collection. Another work, Boy with an earring, dates from Drost's Italian period (1655–59), and is notable for the way in which technical examination of the painting has revealed an earlier composition by Drost beneath the visible image. It can also be contested that a further painting in the collection—listed in the museum's catalogs under the name of the Bolognese master Gaetano Gandolfi—is, in fact, a further work by Drost that is probably most correctly called Boy in a straw hat.
