Abraham van Diepenbeeck was born in ‘s-Hertogenbosch in 1596. He was first taught by his father, Jan Roelofsz. van Diepenbeeck, who was a glass painter. Little is known about his early life; he presumably left Den Bosch after the death of his father in 1620. Abraham was first recorded in 1622/3 as a gelaesschrijver (glass painter) in the Antwerp guild. It has been hotly debated whether or not he was also trained by Rubens, as this was mentioned by the artist biographer Arnold Houbraken in his 'Groote Schouburgh' (1718); there is however no evidence to support this assumption. Van Diepenbeeck did collaborate with Rubens on several projects, starting with the design of the title page of the second edition of the Vitae Patrum (1628), which Rubens tasked him to do in 1627. In the early 1630's van Diepenbeeck was in France, together with his fellow artist and compatriot Theodoor van Thulden; apparently they were on assignment for Rubens, to make drawn copies of the frescoes by Primaticcio and Nicolò dell' Abate in and around the Château de Fontainebleau. 

 

 By August 1633 van Diepenbeeck was back in Antwerp, as he signed a contract on the 25th to design and paint the windows in the choir of the church of the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwebroeders. Throughout the 1630s, Van Diepenbeeck produced numerous designs for devotional prints, book illustrations, and thesis prints. In 1636 he was registered as a poorter  – citizen – of Antwerp. In 1637 he married Catharina Heuvick, with whom he had eight children. In 1638/9 he re-enrolled in the Antwerp guild of St Luke as a painter, having apparently grown tired of stained-glass painting. After Rubens' death in 1640 he received many commissions for altarpieces for local churches and monasteries, although he remained active as a designer of prints and title pages for books, especially for the Plantin Moretus press. Having become an established artist, van Diepenbeeck was appointed vice-dean of the guild of St Luke in 1641; the following year however he declined an offer to become dean. A dispute over the guild regulations led to his expulsion from the guild, and as his production of paintings gradually decreased (no dated paintings are known after 1655), the artist shifted his focus to the production of print and tapestry designs. In the late 1640's he travelled to England, where he worked for William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle; among other things he illustrated the latter’s book on horsemanship. After the death of his first wife, he remarried in Schelle (where he then lived) in 1652 to Anne van der Dort, with whom he had four more children. Only in 1672 was van Diepenbeeck re-admitted to the guild, registering his only documented pupil, Jan Pauwels.

 

Van Diepenbeeck - who was described by the art historian Frans Jozef van den Branden as Rubens' "most truthful follower" - was a prolific draughtsman who left us hundreds of drawings, including designs for prints, tapestries and book illustrations, as well as sketches for paintings and stained-glass windows. The present drawing relates to van Diepenbeeck's trip to France in 1632, when Rubens had tasked him with drawing copies after the frescoes by Primaticcio and Niccolò dell'Abbate at the Château de Fontainebleau. Rubens presumably wanted these copies for his cantoor, which was a repository of his preparatory drawings and sketches, but which also contained various other artistic materials  and thus functioned somewhat as an image archive of sorts. Many counterproofs of the drawings by van Diepenbeeck were made, indicating that the models he copied were widely disseminated amongst other Flemish artists. Today, the two largest groups of drawings from his Fontainebleau mission are held at the Royal Library, Brussels and the Albertina, Vienna. The present drawing, depicting two men (presumably Roman priests) and a young boy performing a sacrifice, was clearly done after a fresco (hence the slightly weird perspective), and would have been drawn after a now-lost decoration at the Château. Interestingly, a counterproof of the present drawing is held at the Royal Library, Brussels (inv. no. S.V 76828; see illustration).