This is not an oil sketch but a small painted record of a c. 1618 painting by Rubens in the Hermitage, which may have served as the basis for the print of the same size by Michel Natalis (of which an impression in the Bibliothèque National, Paris, was retouched by Rubens himself). The print claims to be published by Abraham van Diepenbeeck, who may therefore be the author of this work; if so then it must date from c. 1640, the only moment that Diepenbeeck and Natalis could have worked together in Antwerp before Rubens’s death.