An engraving of a portrait of a boy, playing a small drum called rommelpot. He is dressed for Carnival, with a string of sausages around his shoulders and a fool's foxtail with a bell on his neck. The verse below the image refers to the boy as the fool of Mardi Gras and in the context of the Dutch Drolls album he represents the sense of sound. The painting after which the print was made is by Abraham Bloemart and is in a private collection. This print is lettered in Dutch along the bottom: "Siet de Vastel-avonts Sot / Comt hier met de Rommelpot, // Hoort hem singen, lieve man / Geeft een Koeckjen wt de kan // Abrahamus Bloemaert pinx: // C. Bloemaert sculp: et excud".

This print is inlaid in folio 69 of the Dutch Drolls album (RCIN 970362). This album originally contained 99 prints on 72 folios, with the prints numbered 1-99 in pencil in a nineteenth-century hand on the mount sheet above each print. A number of other prints were added later, mostly on the versos of the existing sheets and on two additional folios at the end of the album (fols 73-74), probably during the nineteenth century.

 

For more information see Mark McDonald, The Print Collection of Cassiano dal Pozzo. I: Ceremonies, Costumes, Portraits and Genre, 3 vols, Royal Collection Trust 2017, part of The Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo: A Catalogue Raisonné, cat. no. 442