St Ursula’s hand posture

In short strokes, the visible underdrawing outlines the lower arm with a loosely hanging, hand wearing a ring. The drawing of the saint’s other hand, the one whose fingers grasp the shaft of the arrow, looks more clumsy. While these fingers are shorter in the painting, the hanging hand was dispensed with entirely in favour of one now only partly visible, and seeming to grasp the bunched garment rather insecurely. The posture of the hanging hand was originally also planned for the companion at the left-hand edge of the picture. In her case too, this gesture was rejected in the painted version, but here the corrections were already made in the drawing; these corrections differ in their style from the rest of the underdrawing of this panel.

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