Jacques de Gheyn II, a prolific draftsman, worked in a naturalistic style that developed in both Italy and northern Europe as the artists who came of age toward the end of the sixteenth century rejected the artificiality of Mannerism. Though it has been suggested that this drawing represents de Gheyn himself, or his son, neither identification can be sustained, and the sitter is probably a young artist in de Gheyn’s studio. The iconography of the drawing is often read as having moralizing overtones, the candle referring to the brevity of life, the writing implements connoting the vanity of earthly endeavors. These meanings are in keeping with de Gheyn’s industrious outlook and may well have been implicit in the image, although given de Gheyn’s many other drawings that are straightforward studies of individual figures, heads, or limbs, it is perhaps unnecessary to insist too strongly on symbolic content.