The Curious Ones
by BRAMER, Leonaert, Bush and gray ink, gray and brown washes on light brown paper, 391 x 560 mm
This drawing (on five pieces of paper joined) represents six people gathered before a house in the classicising style of the mid-seventeenth century. The man on the left points out an oversized keyhole to the provocatively attired woman next to him. A similarly dressed woman and a man in fashionable clothing spy through the aperture, which is an actual hole in the centre of the paper.
This drawing, together with another of the same dimensions in the D�sseldorf museum, may be a design for the exterior of a perspective box, an object flourished in Holland during the 1650s and 1660s.