Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) was an industrious copyist who drew inspiration from different sources throughout his life. His motives for copying the work of other artists were various: as an exercise, an aide-memoire, to collect motifs and to adapt them. In his youth, for example, he regularly copied the woodcuts by Tobias Stimmer (1539–1586) in the latter’s illustrated Bible, which Rubens considered a particular gem. The present sheet of studies in the Liberna Collection contains four figural groups combined from five Stimmer woodcuts of Old Testament scenes: at the top, the sword-wielding cherubim and fleeing Adam from the Expulsion from Paradise; centre left, two figures attempting to escape the rising waters in The Flood; and lower left, a motif of human charity from The Brazen Serpent. The figures below right are copied from two different woodcuts: the kneeling man from a Moses Preaching and the two standing men from the royal council in Esther and Ahasuerus.