Engraving, 1508, on paper with a Crowned Shield with High Goblet watermark, a good early impression, first state (of three) before the address of M.Petri Sheet: 28.8 x 21.4 cm Provenance: W. Ducker (?) (Lugt. 204). His stamp at lower centre left recto. Lugt attributed this to an English collector from the first half of the nineteenth century, though it is not known how he identified the stamp with Ducker. Prints by Dürer, van Leyden and Rembrandt from the same collection are in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, Poughkeepsie, NY (The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center), and in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston respectively. P. & D. Colnaghi, London, 3 March 1976 Literature: New Hollstein 126 This is Lucas van Leyden’s earliest dated engraving. If the 1494 birthdate is correct, this would make the artist about fourteen years old at the time of it’s creation. The subject is taken from the popular book The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, written between about 1357 – 1371 possibly in France or in the Low Countries. In this episode, the monk Sergius and Mohammed, the monk’s student have fallen asleep. Mohammed’s men then kill the monk with Mohammed’s sword and return the sword to its sheaf in order to persuade Mohammed, on his awakening, that he was the perpetrator of the deed