Freeman’s American Art & Pennsylvania Impressionists Auction: Wyeths, Henri, Shinn, du Bois, Redfield, Lewis

With paintings from three generations of Wyeths, two members of The Eight, and representatives of the New Hope School among others, Freeman’s American Art & Pennsylvania Impressionists auction touches on important genres and subjects of great American art, in short a collector’s dream. The June 5 auction includes 125 lots and begins at 2pm.

After selling four works of illustration art by N.C. Wyeth within the past year for a total of $1.3 million, another exceptional illustrative work by Wyeth comes to auction at Freeman’s.

“After the Day’s Work  (Arriving Home)” (Lot 80, est. $150,000-250,000) is an idyllic illustration of a man retiring home to his family, reminiscent of Norman Rockwell’s iconic style. The painting was initially published in an English textbook in 1926, but it is possible that it may date to as early as 1921 (presently dated to ca. 1924-1926). This fresh to market painting has been in private hands since it was acquired in 1993.

Other works from the Wyeth family include several sketches and a watercolor by Andrew Wyeth (Lots 81-83). The watercolor (Lot 81, est. $30,000-50,000) is a thank you note of sorts presented to the graphic designer who laid out Betsy Wyeth's book, Christina's World: Paintings and Prestudies of Andrew Wyeth, published in 1982. It will be included in the forthcoming Catalogue Raisonné of the artist's work.

Two paintings of pastoral life by Jamie Wyeth,

“Two Stayed Home” and

“Fallen Tree” (lots 84 & 85 both est. $30,000-50,000), feature the artist’s signature technique and distinctive imagery.

Two works from the Ashcan School are also among the auction’s highlights with Robert Henri’s “Manolita Marequis" (Lot 27, est. $120,000-180,000) being one of the standouts. Robert Henri is best known as the most prominent and celebrated member of the group known as The Eight. Henri frequently traveled to Spain, particularly between 1900 and 1926. During that time he painted a large and significant amount of works depicting Spanish people and their everyday life. The 1908 piece “Manolita Marequis" is an excellent example of a privately owned work that embodies Henri's fascination with Spanish subjects, including dancers. Her striking red and black floral dress and vivid rose in her hair are matched only by her commanding expression. An exotic beauty, her bold features immediately demand the viewer's attention and the dark background and animated brushstrokes add to the painting's appeal.

Also from the Ashcan school, “The Plaza Looking Northeast at 59th Street” (Lot 29, est. $50,000-80,000) by Everett Shinn. According to a label in Shinn's handwriting verso, the painting depicts the "first sketches made for the decorations in the Hotel Plaza bar. These changed to more serious presentation. E.S." Three murals by Shinn adorn the walls of New York City's Plaza Hotel and were recently restored in 2010.

A student of Robert Henri and producing artwork during the Jazz Age, Guy Pène du Bois depicted the café life and culture around him.
Pène du Bois’s “Locked Jury” (Lot 42, est. $40,000-60,000) is another notable piece in the sale. The color palette and stylized figures shows a number of various social interactions occurring as small vignettes throughout the composition. Of particular note is the woman in pink—the only female in the painting—on whom most of the color is concentrated, and who immediately draws the eye through her appearance of isolation and contemplation. Each encounter seems to be a separate engagement unto itself. The title, "Locked Jury", indicates a sense of disagreement and stalemate; the dark, almost smoky appearance of the room adds to the somber, yet intense sentiment exuding from the canvas. This painting was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.






From the Pennsylvania Impressionists, there is a selection of landscape paintings, including

Edward Willis Redfield’s “House in Point Pleasant” (Lot 115, est. $60,000-100,000), which boasts an impeccable provenance as it was passed directly from the artist through his family to the present owner.

The smaller scale piece by Redfield, “The Hill Country” (Lot 117, est. $80,000-120,000) abounds with brightness and life; the vivid, luminous colors of spring cover the canvas and invite the viewer into the scene. The painting will be included in the forthcoming Catalogue Raisonné of Redfield's work compiled by Dr. Thomas Folk.


Other notable paintings by Pennsylvania Impressionists coming to auction include Fern Isabel Coppedge’s “Harbor Scene” (Lot 96 est. $40,000-60,000); George William Sotter’s “The Neighbor’s House” (Lot 99, est. $40,000-60,000); and Walter Elmer Schofield’s “May in Cornwall” (Lot 116, est. $25,000-40,000.

Additional Lots of Interest in Freeman's June 5 Auction American Art & Pennsylvania Impressionists 

Lot 1 Martin Lewis “Glow of the City" est. $30,000-50,000

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao presents Windows on the City: The School of Paris, 1900 –1945

From April 22 to October 23, 2016, t he Guggenheim Museum Bilbao presents Windows on the City: The  School of Paris, 1900  –1945,  an exhibition  of more than 50 masterpieces from the collection of the Solomon  R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. This exhibition is the first since the renewal of the management  agreement with the Guggenheim Foundation, signed in December 2014 and valid for 20 years. The  agreement provides for a range of new initiatives that will broaden the partnership and emphasizes the Solomon R. Guggenheim  Museum’s commitment to present  an exhibition of key, iconic works from its collection every two years  at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.   

Windows on the City: The School of Paris, 1900  –1945  includes some of the most influential paintings and  sculptures of the last century, created by artists such as Constantin Brancusi, Georges Braque, Robert  Delaunay, Amedeo Modigliani, and Pablo Picasso.  In the early twentieth century, Paris was the capital of the avant-garde. Artists from around the world  settled in the City of Light, where they created new forms of art and literature and responded to the rapid  economic, social, and technological developments that were fundamentally transforming city  life.  It was in Paris that Picasso and Braque radically overturned the conventions of painting, Delaunay composed  harmonious  visions of color, Kandinsky pursued new directions in abstraction, and Brancusi reimagined how sculptures could be present in space. 

The title of the exhibition, which refers  to a series by Delaunay,  illustrates  how the modern city became a backdrop and  an inspiration for artistic production. Spanning from the first years of the twentieth century through World War II , the exhibition charts the key movements of modernism  —from Cubism to Orphism to Surrealism—and the artists who came to be known  as the École de Paris  (School of Paris). 

Among the masterpieces featured are 

Picasso’s Le Moulin de la  Galette (1900,

Modigliani’s Nude (1917),  

and Marc Chagall’s Green  Violinist (1923  –24).

Though diverse, the artistic visions represented in this exhibition manifest a common impulse to eschew  conservative  aesthetics and transform perceptions of everyday life in a modern city.  The rise of Fascism and the occupation  of France  during  World War  II ultimately ended the School of Paris, as the artists who had once sought political, spiritual, and creative refuge in the city were forced to leave.  

A tour through the exhibition

Cubism  was  one of the most important artistic innovations that emerged in Paris  in the  first  half of the  twentieth  century. This  revolutionary approach to painting, developed by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque between 1907 and 1914, challenged  the conventions of visual art and the very nature of representation.  This gallery includes key works that exemplify Analytic Cubism, an intellectual style in which  form and space are “broken  down  ;”  

Braque’s  Piano and Mandola (1909–10)  

 and Picasso’s Bottles and Glasses (1911–12)  

feature many characteristics of this approach, including a muted palette. While  still  recognizable in these paintings, object are fractured into multiple planes, as is the  background.  

In the years leading up to and following World War  I, artists used the visual vocabulary of Cubism to achieve various ends, such as exploring pure abstraction and  modern science, and  infusing contemporary  experience with the  spirituality of folk traditions.

Robert Delaunay
Red Eiffel Tower (La tour rouge), 1911–12
Oil on canvas
125 x 90.3 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection, 46.1036

Robert Delaunay
Circular Forms (Formes circulaires), 1930
Oil on canvas
128.9 x 194.9 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection, 49.1184

Robert Delaunay’s depictions of Parisian life and landmarks,  are exemplified in works such as Red Eiffel Tower (1911-  12), while his later abstract painting, Circular Forms (1930)  showcases his interest in contemporary developments in optics.

In this gallery, visitors can also observe Green Violinist (1923) (above) by Russian  artist  Marc Chagall, who produced this painting upon his return to Paris after having spent much of World War  I in his home  country. The work merges the  Cubist fragmentation of  space with colorful imagery inspired by Russian and  Jewish folklore, conveying the artist’s nostalgia for the religious festivals and popular celebrations of his youth.  

The work of Constantin Brancusi, who traveled from his native Romania to settle in Paris  in 1904, rejects the theatrical, narrative impulse of much nineteenth century sculpture in favor of radically simplified,  abstract forms and the unadorned presentation of wood, metal, and other  materials.  Brancusi  never identified the specific sources or meanings of his works, but  The Sorceress (1916–24) might relate to a supernatural figure from  Romanian legends.  

Gallery  307  

After the First World War, Paris once again became a  center of  cultural  production. During that time, the  adherents of Surrealism—a movement inaugurated  with André Breton’s 1924  manifesto  —were  also  counted  as part of the School of Paris. Drawing on the theories of Sigmund Freud, these writers and artists  attempted  to  articulate and  give form to repressed desires, dream imagery, and other  elements of the  unconscious. Some, like Yves Tanguy  juxtaposed  incongruous images and objects;  others, like Jean Arp and Joan Miró, experimented with automatism, creating drawings without a premeditated composition or subject  in order to bypass the conscious mind. Infl  uenced by Arp and Miró, American  sculptor Alexander  Calder created a language of  movement  and balance with his famous mobiles and wire sculptures including Romulus and Remus  (1928).  

Vasily Kandinsky, who made significant advances in abstract painting while living in Germany and Russia during the 1910s and ‘20s, settled in  Paris in 1934. In his works from this period, including  

Yellow Painting (1938) and  

Around the Circle (1940),

Kandinsky combines  free-playing  forms  similar to those from his  earliest  abstractions  with the more geometric and biomorphic shapes he  developed while teaching at the Bauhaus.  

Didaktika  

The exhibition includes an educational area  that  aims to transport visitors to turn-of-the -century Paris through a “time tunnel” that provides a historical, political, economic, and social context of the time. An  icon  of modernity and the avant -garde, Paris is, in a way, a co-star of the exhibition. Focusing  on four  major  expositions  that took place in Paris  during the first half of the twentieth century  —  the 1900  Universal Exposition, the 1925  International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts,  the  1931 International Colonial  Exhibition, and the 1937  International Exposition  of Art and Technology in  Modern Life —the contents of the Didaktika are presented through texts, large photomurals, videos, and audio recordings that evoke the vibrancy  of  the City of Light.  

Georges Braque
Violin and Palette (Violon et palette), September 1, 1909Oil on canvas
91.7 x 42.8 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 54.1412 © VEGAP, Bilbao, 2016 

Marc Chagall
The Soldier Drinks (Le soldat boit), 1911–12
Oil on canvas
109.2 x 94.6 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection, 49.1211
© VEGAP, Bilbao, 2016

Juan Gris
Newspaper and Fruit Dish (Journal et compotier), March 1916
Oil on canvas
46 x 37.8 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, By gift, Estate of Katherine S. Dreier, 53.1341

Vasily Kandinsky
Around the Circle (Autour du cercle), May–August 1940
Oil and enamel on canvas
96.8 x 146 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection, 49.1222
© VEGAP, Bilbao, 2016

Fernand Léger
Nude Model in the Studio (Le modèle nu dans l'atelier), 1912–13
Oil on burlap
128.6 x 95.9 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection, 49.1193
© VEGAP, Bilbao, 2016

Joan Miró
Landscape (The Hare) (Paysage [Le lièvre]), autumn 1927 Oil on canvas
129.6 x 194.6 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 57.1459
© 2016 Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Amedeo Modigliani
Nude (Nu), 1917
Oil on canvas
73 x 116.7 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection, By gift, 41.535

Piet Mondrian
Still Life with Gingerpot II (Stilleven met gemberpot II), 1911–12 Oil on canvas
91.5 x 120 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, L294.76
© 2007 Mondrian / Holtzman Trust

Pablo Picasso
Le Moulin de la Galette, autumn 1900
Oil on canvas
88.2 x 115.5 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York,
Thannhauser Collection, Gift, Justin K. Thannhauser, 78.2514.34 © Sucesión Pablo Picasso. VEGAP, Bilbao, 2016

Pablo Picasso
Carafe, Jug and Fruit Bowl (Carafon, pot et compotier), summer 1909
Oil on canvas
71.8 x 64.6 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection,
By gift, 37.536
© Sucesión Pablo Picasso. VEGAP, Bilbao, 2016

Pablo Picasso
Mandolin and Guitar (Mandoline et guitare), 1924
Oil with sand on canvas
140.7 x 200.3 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 53.1358 © Sucesión Pablo Picasso. VEGAP, Bilbao, 2016

Yves Tanguy
There, Motion Has Not Yet Ceased (Là ne finit pas encore le mouvement), 1945 Oil on canvas
71.1 x 55.5 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Bequest, Richard S. Zeisler, 2007.47 © 2016 Estate of Yves Tanguy / VEGAP, Bilbao, 2016

CARAVAGGIO AND THE PAINTERS OF THE NORTH

Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza

21 June to 18 September 2016

From 21 June to 18 September 2016, the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza will be presenting Caravaggio and the Painters of the North, an exhibition that focuses on Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (Milan, 1571 – Porto Ercole, 1610) and his influence on the northern European artists who were fascinated by his painting and disseminated his style. Curated by Gert Jan van der Sman, professor at the University of Leiden and amember of the Istituto Universitario Olandese di Storia dell’Arte in Florence, the exhibition analyses the artist’s legacy and the wide variety of responses that his work provoked. On display will be 53 paintings, twelve of them by Caravaggio, loaned from private collections, museums and institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, and the church of San Pietro in Montorio in Rome.

The exhibition will offer a survey of Caravaggio’s career from his Roman period to the moving dark paintings of his final years, shown alongside a selection of works by his most important followers in Holland (Dirk van Baburen, Gerrit van Honthorst and Hendrick Ter Brugghen), Flanders (Nicolas Régnier and Louis Finson) and France (Simon Vouet, Claude Vignonand Valentin de Boulogne).

Between 1600 and 1630 more than two thousand artists settled in Rome, of whom a third were foreigners who transformed the city into an artistic melting-pot. To an equal or even greater extent than the Italians, the northern European painters opted to follow Caravaggio’s style for two principal reasons: the lesser importance of the classical element in the northern pictorial tradition, and the suitability of Caravaggio’s style for application outside the traditional context of a studio or drawing academy.

In the Low Countries and Germanic regions working from life through the observation of visible elements taken from the surrounding context was a firmly-rooted tradition. This established a link with the manner of working characteristic of Caravaggio, whose Lombard origins predisposed him to paint ad vivum, an approach that artists with a classical training considered inadequate in that it represented an obstacle to achieving perfection in art. In addition, most of the Dutch, Flemish and French painters who settled in Rome had received a basic training in drawing and painting in their native regions and were particularly interested in rapidly capturing and assimilating new ideas. Caravaggio’s art thus appealed to them, not only for the possibility of working from life but alsofor its emphasis on the use of light, shadow and colour.

The foreign painters were able to assimilate this style into their own without the restrictions implied by a study program. Caravaggio and the Painters of the North transports visitors to the era of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio and the decades following his death, a period particularly rich in masterpieces of painting and when his fame was still at its height.

The exhibition opens with two galleries devoted to works by Caravaggio executed during his time in Rome and which reveal his multi-faceted career. The following galleries show works by painters from north of the Alps who saw Caravaggio’s works at first hand. The result of their impressions was manifested in the widest variety of ways, given that each brought their own contribution while also seeking out new modes of expression in both religious and secular art. The last two galleries are devoted to the work of Caravaggio and his foreign followers in Naples and southern Italy. Caravaggio in Rome (1592 - 1606)

During his early years in the city Caravaggio executed paintings that were sold by art dealers for modest sums. These were genre scenes and still lifes with fruit and flowers, a speciality that he brought with him from Lombardy. 

With Boy bitten by a Lizard of around 1593-95 the artist astonished his contemporaries both for the mimetic qualities of the vase of flowers and the youth’s melodramatic expression. His depictions of characters typical of Roman street life, such as  

The Fortune Teller of 1595-96  attracted the attention of painters and collectors. 
 

The artist’s first patron, Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte, offered him lodgings in the Palazzo Madama where Caravaggio painted 

The Musicians of 1595-96

and Saint Catherine of Alexandria, 

revealing the rapid evolution of his technique from the brilliant and colourful palette of the former to the pronounced chiaroscuro of the latter.

Caravaggio’s ability to bypass conventions and approach traditional themes with surprising originality is evident in  

David with the Head of Goliath of around 1598-99.

The years 1596 and 1597 marked a turning point in the artist’s career with the commission of two canvases – 

The Calling of Saint Matthew 

and The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew

- for the Contarelli chapel in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi, in which Caravaggio combined his preference for painting from life and the depiction of popular figure types with a moving sense of drama. 

From the moment the work was displayed in public, during the Jubilee of 1600, Caravaggio became the artist most in demand in Rome, resulting in both public and private commissions for clients such as Maffeo Barberini, the future Pope Urban VIII, for whom the artist painted 

Caravaggio. The Sacrifice of Isaac, 1603 Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florencia

 

The Sacrifice of Isaac in 1603

and the banker Ottavio Costa, who commissioned 

Saint John the Baptist in the Desert of 1602.

Earliest admirers in Rome: Adam Elsheimer and Peter Paul Rubens In 1600, when the German painter Adam Elsheimer (Frankfurt am Main, 1578 – Rome, 1610) settled in Rome, Caravaggio was completing his canvases for San Luigi dei Francesi. Peter Paul Rubens (Siegen, 1577 – Antwerp, 1640) arrived in the city a year later, by which time Caravaggio had already become widely known. Elsheimer and Rubens were the first northern European painters to make direct contact with his art. 

Caravaggio’s influence is evident in Rubens’s first official commission in Rome to paint the altarpieces for the basilica of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme. His interest in Caravaggio is revealed in the powerful lighting of some elements inthe compositions. In addition, Rubens made use of the Caravaggesque figure type of the seductive youth with black curly hair in his  

Head of a young Man of 1601-02. 

During his second period in the city, from 1605 to 1608, he painted 

The Adoration of the Shepherds in 1608 using a pronounced chiaroscuro in the area that includes the angels. Rubens also played a key role in the acquisition of the controversial 

Death of the Virgin for the Duke of Mantua’s collection. Caravaggio’s painting had been rejected by the Carmelite nuns of Santa Maria della Scala due to the realism employed in the depiction of the Virgin. 

Following his return to Flanders, Rubens was again inspired by Caravaggio’s paintings on various occasions, including his celebrated free copy of 

The Entombment of Christ, of which a drawing is included in the exhibition (cat. 13).   

Artists and art lovers: Quadri da stanzaand quadri d’altare

In addition to owning fifteen works by Caravaggio, the brothers Benedetto and Vincenzo Giustiniani assisted numerous foreign painters to obtain commissions. They also offered accommodation in their house to Gerard van Honthorst (Utrecht, 1592-1656), David de Haen (Rotterdam, 1597(?) – Rome, 1622) and Nicolas Régnier (Maubeuge,ca.1588 – Venice, 1667). Dirck van Baburen (Wijk bij Duurstede, ca.1594 – Utrecht, 1624) was also fortunate in finding a patron shortly after his arrival in Rome, the Spaniard Pedro Cosida, Philip III’s ambassador in the city, whose patronage culminated in the decoration of his chapelin San Pietro in Montorio. 

One of Van Baburen’s most admired works of his Roman period is  

 

The Entombment of Christ of 1617 and it is possible that the artist met his patron through José de Ribera who, like him, had arrived in the capital after passing through Parma. 

Hendrick ter Brugghen and the Utrecht School 

Hendrick ter Brugghen (The Hague (?) – Utrecht, 1629) was the first of the Dutch painters who, following a period in Rome, returned in 1614 to his native country where he introduced Caravaggio’s characteristic subjects and stylistic formulas. In 

The Supper at Emmaus of 1616 and  

The Calling of Saint Matthew of around 1617-19 (cat. 29) Ter Brugghen adopted Caravaggio’s compositional format using a brilliant palette notable for its subtle gradations of colour and the painstaking depiction of the wrinkles of the skin, drapery folds, tones of the headdresses and the reflection of light on objects. 

The return to Utrecht between 1620 and 1621 of Gerard van Honthorst and Dirck van Baburen influenced Ter Brugghen’s stylistic evolution and a healthy rivalry arose between these painters which resulted in an intention to emulate or surpass each other in works such as Boy playing a Recorder(cat. 30) and  




The Flute Player, both of 1621, which Ter Brugghen painted as a response to Baburen’s half-length figures of musicians such as 

Young Man singing of 1622. Over time Honthorst’s palette became more brilliant and colourful, as evident in paintings such as his  

Merry Company of 1622 

The French painters in Rome

This gallery displays work by French artists active in Rome between 1610 and 1630, representing a particularly interesting group due to their social and cultural diversity. Among the foreign painters living in the city Simon Vouet (Paris, 1590 – 1649) enjoyed a more privileged position than most. Son of a court painter, he grew up in Paris and had access to the court from an early age. Following a brief period in Venice, he settled in Rome in 1613/14 where he received a regular stipend from the French court. The official nature of his residence in Rome brought him notable prestige in artistic circles and the favour of leading collectors, for whom he executed works such as David victorious over Goliath of 1621. 

Claude Vignon (Tours, 1593 – Paris, 1670) also came from a prosperous background as the son of a valet de chambre. Vignon was born in Tours, a habitual place of residence of the French monarchs, and grew up in Paris. Having arrived in Rome in 1609/1610, in 1616 to 1617 he went to Spain and Paris and it is likely that he painted his impressive  

Martyrdom of Saint Matthew of 1617 (cat. 36) in France. Vignon’s friendship with Vouet helped his career in Rome. 

The situation of these two painters contrasts with the struggle for success on the part of Valentin de Boulogne (Coulommiers, 1531 – Rome, 1632). Some years would pass before the artist found a committed patron in the form of Francesco Barberini. Boulogne’s biographer Giovanni Baglione associated his manner of painting from life with his dissolute lifestyle. Like Caravaggio, Boulogne executed large compositions by painting directly on the canvas. Despite the complexity of his creations, such as  

David with the Head of Goliath and two Soldiers of ca.1616-18, there is no evidence that he prepared his compositions with preliminary drawings or studies. Caravaggio and his followers in Naples and southern Italy.

Among the foreign painters living in Naples and influenced by Caravaggio, two are particularly outstanding: Louis Finson (Bruges, ca.1580 – Amsterdam,1617) and Matthias Stom ((?) ca.1600 – northern Italy (?) after 1649). The former is the only northern Caravaggesque painter who probably knew the artist in person, while Stom was the last of his followers, producing an oeuvre that reveals Caravaggio’s influence until around 1640. Finson settled in Naples in 1605 where he began to collaborate with Abraham Vinck, a painter specialising in portraits. It is thought that Caravaggio made friends with both of them and when he left for Malta in 1607 he entrusted them with two of his paintings, 

Judith and Holofernes  

and The Madonna of the Rosary. 

In 1612 Finson settled in the south of France where he enjoyed considerable success painting in the style of Caravaggio. He died in Amsterdam in 1617 in the house of his friend and associate Vinck. The paintings that the two took home were the first (and only) originals by Caravaggio that could be seen in the Low Countries. 

Twenty years after Finson left Naples, Stom settled in that city. It is not known whether he was born in Amersfoort (near Utrecht) or in Flanders. It is possible that one of Stom’s masters was Gerard van Honthorst who passed on to him his interest in candle-lit scenes. 

Stom’s paintings depicting figures in the immediate foreground were among those that brought him success in Naples, where he ran his own studio from 1635 to around 1639. In the 1630s Stom’s technique became more fluid and his colours brighter. He moved to Sicily where he executed various important public commissions. 

The Flagellation of Christ of around 1640 is an extremely dynamic composition in which the life-size figures are illuminated in an exceptionally dramatic manner. Dominated by the chiaroscuro, this is an extremely theatrical presentation in which the idealised nude Christ contrasts with the rough appearance of his torturers in a final echo of Caravaggio. 

The exhibition concludes with  

Caravaggio.The Martydom of Saint Ursula, 1610 Colección Intesa Sanpaolo. Gallerie d'Italia - Palazzo Zevallos Stigliano, Náp

The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula of 1610, in which Caravaggio depicted himself holding a lance at the moment when the King of the Huns wounds the saint with an arrow. Painted a few weeks before his death, it marks the high point of this final section of the exhibition.