Dirck van Baburen and the “Self-Taught” Master, Angelo Caroselli

Dirck van Baburen, The Entombment, 1617, Pietà Chapel, San Pietro in Montorio, Rome

During his approximately eight-year stay in Rome, the noted Utrecht Caravaggist, Dirck van Baburen, responded to the work of some of the Eternal City’s most influential painters. It has long been known, for example, that Van Baburen appropriated motifs and pictorial devices from such eminent Italian artists as Caravaggio and Bartolomeo Manfredi as well as the Spaniard, Jusepe de Ribera. The present essay argues that the art of the little-known Italian master, Angelo Caroselli, also exerted a formidable impact upon the Dutchman, particularly the latter’s portrayal of genre subjects produced after his return to his native Utrecht.

DOI: 10.5092/jhna.2013.5.2.5

Acknowledgements

I am often surprised by how my years as a student spent under the tutelage of Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann continue to inform my work three decades after the fact. As a budding young scholar of Dutch art during the 1980s, I was swayed, like so many members of my generation, by iconological methods of interpretation and hence selected a dissertation topic—domestic virtue in seventeenth-century Dutch painting—that would afford opportunities to delve rather heavily into the cultural ambient wherein such images were created. This type of research continued to fascinate me for a sustained period of time.28 In recent years, however, I have become increasingly preoccupied with the so-called Utrecht Caravaggists in an ongoing effort to assess and catalogue genuine pictures by two of the three most prominent members of that so-called school: Hendrick ter Brugghen and Dirck van Baburen. In this regard, Egbert’s invaluable instruction and wise counsel, imparted so many years ago, happily left an indelible impression upon me. I remain forever grateful that he taught his students how to examine works of art closely, and with great patience, helped us to sharpen our “eyes” and hone our skills. Little did I know way back then that those lessons would eventually prove pivotal to my future research agenda. It is therefore with gratitude and, as a way of saying “thank you,” that I offer this modest contribution to him.

Angelo Caroselli,  Pietà,  ca. 1611–12,  Vittrice Chapel, Santa Maria in Vallicella, Rome
Fig. 1 Angelo Caroselli, Pietà, ca. 1611–12, oil on plaster, size unknown. Vittrice Chapel, Santa Maria in Vallicella, Rome (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Dirck van Baburen,  The Entombment, 1617,  Pietà Chapel, San Pietro in Montorio, Rome
Fig. 2 Dirck van Baburen, The Entombment, 1617, oil on canvas, 222 x 142 cm. Pietà Chapel, San Pietro in Montorio, Rome (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Caravaggio,  The Entombment,  ca. 1601–04,  Vatican Museums, Rome
Fig. 3 Caravaggio, The Entombment, ca. 1601–04, oil on canvas, 300 x 203 cm. Vatican Museums, Rome, inv. no. 40386 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Angelo Caroselli,  Man Singing,  ca. 1612–16,  Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Fig. 4 Angelo Caroselli, Man Singing, ca. 1612–16, oil on panel, 53 x 43 cm. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, inv. no. 1583 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Bartolomeo Manfredi,  The Concert,  ca. 1610–12,  Private Collection
Fig. 5 Bartolomeo Manfredi, The Concert, ca. 1610–12, oil on canvas, 135.5 x 97.3 cm. Private Collection (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Dirck van Baburen,  Singing Man, 1622,  Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main
Fig. 6 Dirck van Baburen, Singing Man, 1622, oil on canvas, 71 x 58.8 cm. Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main, inv. no. 2242 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Hendrick ter Brugghen,  Singing Boy, 1627,  Boston Museum of Fine Arts
Fig. 7 Hendrick ter Brugghen, Singing Boy, 1627, oil on canvas, 85.5 x 71.5 cm. Boston Museum of Fine Arts, inv. no. 58.975 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Andrea Caroselli,  Violinist and Courtesan,  ca. 1612–16,  Otto Naumann, Ltd.
Fig. 8 Andrea Caroselli, Violinist and Courtesan, ca. 1612–16, oil on slate, diameter 33cm.Otto Naumann, Ltd., New York (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Andrea Caroselli,  Courtesan Making an Obscene Gesture,  ca. 1612–16,  Lemme Collection, Rome
Fig. 9 Andrea Caroselli, Courtesan Making an Obscene Gesture, ca. 1612–16, oil on canvas 57 x 50 cm. Lemme Collection, Rome (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Dirck van Baburen,  The Procuress, 1622,  Boston Museum of Fine Arts
Fig. 10 Dirck van Baburen, The Procuress, 1622, oil on canvas, 101.5 x 107.6 cm. Boston Museum o f Fine Arts, inv. no. 50.2721 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Dirck van Baburen,  Loose Company, 1623,  Landesmuseum, Mainz
Fig. 11 Dirck van Baburen, Loose Company, 1623, oil on canvas, 108 x 153 cm. Landesmuseum, Mainz, inv. no. 108 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
  1. 1. Filippo Baldinucci, Notizie dei professori del disegno da Cimabue in qua . . . (1681–1728; repr., Florence: Eurografica, 1974), 3:740–41; Giovanni Battista Passeri, Vite de pittori, scultori ed architettiche hanno lavorato in Roma, morti dal 1641 fino al 1673 (Rome: G. Settari, 1772), 188–89.

  2. 2. The ability to create copies of other artists’ work that are faithful enough to the original to deceive viewers is a leitmotif in artists’ biographies. One finds, for example, the very same abilities praised in such contemporary Dutch artists as Adriaen van der Werff; see Barbara Gaehtgens, Adriaen van der Werff 1659–1722 (Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1987), 433. This aspect of inherent artistic talent is not addressed in the classic study by Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz, Legend, Myth, and Magic in the Image of the Artist, trans. Alastair Lang (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979).

  3. 3. Silvia Danesi Squarzina, La collezione Giustiniani (Turin: G. Einaudi, 2003), 1:455, no. 233 (“Un quadretto piccolo di S. Matteo in tavola alt. pal. 2 1/2 lar. I 1/2 di mano di Angelo Caroselli ad imitation del Caravaggio”). Squarzina does not believe that this copy and others in the collection were acquired as surrogates for famous paintings but rather that they should be considered the result of didactic exercises for young artists who worked under Giustiniani’s auspices. Giustiniani owned additional paintings by Caroselli, a Prodigal Son and a Pygmalion and Galatea; see, respectively, La collezione Giustiniani, 1:299–-300, no. 99 and 1:300-301, no. 101. Caroselli’s practice of copying works of art for profit, both those from older periods as well as contemporary ones, reflects the financial significance accorded to this enterprise in early modern Europe, perhaps nowhere more so than in the oft-times shady and duplicitous art world of early seventeenth-century Rome. For the complicated status of autograph replicas and copies of original paintings in seventeenth-century Italy, see, among others, Richard Spear, “What Is An Original?” in The Italians in Australia. Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Art, ed. David R. Marshall (Florence: Centro Di, 2004), 15–32; and Luigi Spezzaferro, “Caravaggio accettato: Dal rifiuto al mercato,” in Caravaggio nel iv centenario della Capalla Contarelli, ed. Caterina Volpi (Rome: CAM, 2002), 23–25.

  4. 4. See especially, Carlo Stefano Salerno, “Precisazioni su Angelo Caroselli,” Storia dell’Arte 76 (1992): 346–61; Marta Rossetti, “Note sul soggiorno napoletano di Angelo Caroselli (1585–1652), appunti sulla parentesi fiorentina e alcune opere inedite,” L’Acropoli: Rivista bimestrale diretta da Giuseppe Galasso 11, no. 5 (2010): 530–59. A chronological table of Caroselli’s vitae and travels can be found in Daniela Semprebene, Angelo Caroselli 1585–1652: Un pittore irriverente (Rome: Gangemi Editore, 2011), 54–57; see also, 72–82, a section consisting of archival documents.

  5. 5. These are oil-on-plaster paintings, which accounts for their poor condition today; see Semprebene, Angelo Caroselli, 18–19. For a color photograph of the painting and a brief discussion of it, see Francesca Cappelletti, “Angelo Caroselli (Roma 1585–1652),” in I Caravaggeschi: Percorsi e protagonisti, ed. Alessandro Zuccari (Milan: Skira, 2010), 2:346, fig. 1.

  6. 6. See Semprebene, Angelo Caroselli, 21–22.

  7. 7. A reassessment of the archival documents concerning Van Baburen and his family, as well as of the comments written by the Italian physician and aesthete Giulio Mancini, has led me to conclude that the artist was not born around 1595, as is customarily claimed, but two or three years earlier, that is, ca.1592/93; see Wayne Franits, The Paintings of Dirck van Baburen ca. 1592/93–1624: Catalogue Raisonné (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2013), 2–4.Therefore, when Van Baburen departed for Rome in roughly 1612–13, he was a slightly older, more mature artist than Leonard J. Slatkes, the author of the first monograph on the painter, believed; see Leonard J. Slatkes, Dirck van Baburen (c. 1595 – 1624): A Dutch Painter in Utrecht and Rome (Utrecht: Haentjes, Dekker & Gumbert, 1965), 1–2.

  8. 8. Slatkes, Dirck van Baburen, 28, plausibly suggests that Van Baburen stopped in Venice as well as in Bologna. We also know for a fact that the artist spent at least some time in Parma. In the mid-1980s, Carel van Tuyll discovered a reference in a late eighteenth-century manuscript to an altarpiece, TheMartyrdom of Saint Sebastian, which he painted for the church of Santa Maria dei Servi in that city in 1615; see also Franits, Dirck van Baburen, 238, cat. L7.

  9. 9. Didier Bodart, Les peintres des Pays-Bas Méridionaux et de la Principauté de Liège à Rome au XVIIème siècle (Brussels and Rome: Institut historique belge de Rome, 1970), 1:106, points out that the papacy had provided tax exemptions to the inhabitants of several streets in this area as a way of encouraging artists and artisans to move there. For the history and development of parishes especially during the Counter-Reformation, see Claudio Schiavoni, “The Parochial System in Early Modern Rome,” in Rome – Amsterdam: Two Growing Cities in Seventeenth-Century Europe, ed. Peter van Kessel and Elisja Schulte (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1997), 24–32.

  10. 10. For the parish of San Lorenzo in Lucina and the multinational artists in residence there, see Emanuela Zicarelli, “Demografia artistica: Ricerche negli stati delle anime. 2. Per un censimento degli artisti nella parrochia di San Lorenzo in Lucina,” in Arte e immagine del papato Borghese (1605–1621), ed. Bruno Toscano (San Casciano: Libro Co. Italia, 2005), 33–48.

  11. 11. Sonia Amadio, “Demografia artistica: Ricerche negli stati delle anime. 1. Artisti famosi e nomi senza opere nella parrochia di Sant’Andrea delle Fratte,” in Arte e immagine, 17–31. The author counts 125 painters of varying nationalities inhabiting the parish of Sant’Andrea della Fratte between 1607 and 1613 and 1616 and 1621. For this parish, see also the classic study by G. J. Hoogewerff, Nederlandsche kunstenaars te Rome (1600–1725): Uittreksels uit de parochiale archieven (The Hague: Gedrukt ter Algemeene Landsdrukkerij, 1942), 224–25. 

  12. 12. The precise location where the four gentlemen lived is not declared, but it must have been on the Piazza della Trinità della Monte, where Van Baburen and De Haen had resided the previous year. Hoogewerff, Nederlandsche kunstenaars te Rome, 230, records the notary’s statement “Als in het voorgaande jaar,” which strongly suggests this. Régnier possibly took the place of Cornelia Brabrandia, who had been living with Van Baburen and De Haen in 1619. For Régnier’s lodging situation with the two Dutchmen and a servant and apprentice in 1620, see Annick Lemoine, Nicolas Régnier (alias Niccolò Renieri) ca. 1588–1667: Peintre, collectionneur et marchand d’art (Paris: Arthena, 2007), 28–29, 370, who clarifies and amplifies Hoogewerff’s findings.

  13. 13. Van Baburen and the aforementioned David de Haen received this commission from Pietro Cussida, a wealthy Spanish aesthete from Zaragoza (Saragossa), the capitol of Aragon, who had arrived in Rome by 1602 to serve as a diplomatic agent to the papacy for Philip III (r. 1598–1621) and then, briefly, for Philip IV (r. 1621–65). For this commission, see further Franits, Dirck van Baburen, 9–16, 78–81, cat. A3; 97–99, cat. A7; 196–97, cat. R16; 235, cat. L3.

  14. 14. Franits, Dirck van Baburen, 11. Slatkes, Dirck van Baburen, 24, 36, 38, sees a relationship between the “seated” Christ in Van Baburen’s Entombment and a similar pose in an early painting by Rubens of the same subject (Borghese Gallery, Rome). This is certainly plausible.

  15. 15. For decades, Manfredi’s work and very person were shrouded in mystery–the very fact that he left no signed or dated pictures has plunged the question of his stylistic development into near continual debate. For Manfredi, see Mina Gregori, et al., Dopo Caravaggio: Bartolomeo Manfredi e la Manfrediana Methodus, exh. cat. (Cremona: Museo Civico ala Ponzone, 1987); Nicole Hartje, Bartolomeo Manfredi (1582–1622): Ein Nachfolger Caravaggios und seine europäische Wirkung; Monographie und Werkverzeichnis (Weimar: VDG Verlag and Datenbank für Geisteswissenschaften, 2004); and Rossella Vodret, “Bartolomeo Manfredi (Ostiano 1582 – Roma 1622),” in I Caravaggeschi, 2:515–27; and, more recently, Gianni Papi, Bartolomeo Manfredi (Soncino: Edizioni dei Soncino, 2013).

  16. 16. By far, Hartje, Bartolomeo Manfredi, 117–60 and passim, constitutes the most thorough scholarly examination to date of Manfredi’s influential method.

  17. 17. For Caroselli’s painting, see Wolfgang Prohaska and Gudrun Swoboda, Caravaggio und der internationale Caravaggismus (Vienna and Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2010), 152–59, whose technical analysis reveals that at some point before 1837, its shape was altered: the original oval fir panel was attached to a square pinewood panel.

  18. 18. For example, Cappelletti, “Angelo Caroselli,” 345.

  19. 19. For Van Baburen’s painting, see Franits, Dirck van Baburen, 133–35, cat. A24.

  20. 20. According to Prohaska and Swoboda, Caravaggio, 158–59, this glittering object is actually a Tiberian or Claudian Roman imperial coin. Part of this coin’s inscription reads BRA [D or N], which the authors construe as an allusion to the Brandani family, who patronized the artist and perhaps commissioned this particular painting.

  21. 21. In Caroselli’s painting, the man’s open-handed gesture seems to ward off the onlooker, while in Van Baburen’s painting it probably identifies the man as a maat-zanger (measure singer), the one who provided the musical measure or beat. In addition to the musical concept of measure, the gesture is conceivably related to notions of temperance; see Marcus Dekiert, Musikanten in der Malerei der niederländischen Carvaggio-Nachfolge . . . (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2003), 103, 226; Leonard J. Slatkes and Wayne Franits,The Paintings of Hendrick ter Brugghen 1588–1629: Catalogue Raisonné (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2007), 199, 207, 209; Franits, Dirck van Baburen, 134n7.

  22. 22. Prohaska and Swoboda, Caravaggio, 158n16, cite Van Baburen’s painting but wonder whether the Dutch artist had painted the subject during his Roman period and hence would have influenced Caroselli. Likewise, Marta Rossetti, “Strumenti musicali nella vita e nell’opera di Angelo Caroselli (1585–1652), pittore ‘caravaggesco,’” in La musica al tempo di Caravaggio, ed. Stefania Macioce and Enrico de Pascale (Rome: Gangemi Editore, 2012), 203, cites the presumed precedence of paintings by Van Baburen and Ter Brugghen to explain the presence of this motif in Caroselli’s picture. For Ter Brugghen’s two paintings of singers, see Slatkes and Franits, Hendrick ter Brugghen, 207–08, cat. A85, pl. 84; 210–11, cat. A88, pl. 87.

  23. 23. For this issue, see Cappelletti, “Angelo Caroselli,” 345. Cappelletti also cites a document dated 1614 in which Caroselli declares that he will satisfy a debt with the payment of two paintings, one of which portrayed chess players.

  24. 24. For this painting, see Semprebene, Angelo Caroselli, 177.

  25. 25. For Danae as a model of questionable virtue, see Eric Jan Sluijter, “Emulating Sensual Beauty: Representations of Danaë from Gossaert to Rembrandt,” Simiolus 27 (1999): 28–30, 34–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3780877

  26. 26. For this painting, see Semprebene, Angelo Caroselli, 98, who convincingly demonstrates Caroselli’s authorship.

  27. 27. For Ribera, who like Caroselli, seems to have exerted his greatest impact upon Van Baburen during his Roman period, see, most recently, Gianni Papi, Ribera a Roma (Soncino: Edizioni dei Soncino, 2007) and Javier Portus, et al., El joven Ribera, exh. cat. (Madrid: Museo del Prado, 2011).

  28. 28. It culminated, in some respects, in my overview of Dutch genre painting that was published in 2004: Wayne Franits, Dutch Seventeenth-Century Genre Painting: Its Stylistic and Thematic Evolution (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004).

Amadio, Sonia. “Demografia artistica: Ricerche negli stati delle anime. 1. Artisti famosi e nomi senza opere nella parrochia di Sant’Andrea delle Fratte.” In Arte e immagine del papato Borghese (1605–1621), edited by Bruno Toscano 17–31. San Casciano: Libro Co. Italia, 2005.

Baldinucci, Filippo. Notizie dei professori del disegno da Cimabue in qua . . . 7 vols. 1681–1728; repr., Florence: Eurografica, 1974–75.

Bodart, Didier. Les peintres des Pays-Bas Méridionaux et de la Principauté de Liège à Rome au XVIIème siècle. 2 vols. Brussels and Rome: Institut historique belge de Rome, 1970.

Dekiert, Marcus. Musikanten in der Malerei der niederländischen Carvaggio-Nachfolge . . . Münster: LIT Verlag, 2003.

Franits, Wayne. Dutch Seventeenth-Century Genre Painting: Its Stylistic and Thematic Evolution. London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.

Franits, Wayne. The Paintings of Dirck van Baburen ca. 1592/93–1624: Catalogue Raisonné. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2013.

Gaehtgens, Barbara. Adriaen van der Werff 1659–1722. Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1987.

Gregori, Mina, et al. Dopo Caravaggio: Bartolomeo Manfredi e la Manfrediana Methodus. Exh. cat. Cremona: Museo Civico ala Ponzone, 1987.

Hartje, Nicole. Bartolomeo Manfredi (1582–1622): Ein Nachfolger Caravaggios und seine europäische Wirkung; Monographie und Werkverzeichnis. Weimar: VDG Verlag and Datenbank für Geisteswissenschaften, 2004.

Hoogewerff, G. J. Nederlandsche kunstenaars te Rome (1600–1725): Uittreksels uit de parochiale archieven. The Hague: Gedrukt ter Algemeene Landsdrukkerij, 1942.

Kris, Ernst, and Otto Kurz. Legend, Myth, and Magic in the Image of the Artist. Translated by Alastair Lang. London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979.

Lemoine, Annick. Nicolas Régnier (alias Niccolò Renieri) ca. 1588–1667: Peintre, collectionneur et marchand d’art. Paris: Arthena, 2007.

Papi, Gianni. Ribera a Roma. Soncino: Edizioni dei Soncino, 2007.

Papi, Gianni. Bartolomeo Manfredi. Soncino: Edizioni dei Soncino, 2013.

Passeri, Giovanni Battista. Vite de pittori, scultori ed architetti che hanno lavorato in Roma, morti dal 1641 fino al 1673. Rome: G. Settari, 1772.

Portus, Javier, et al. El joven Ribera. Exh. cat. Madrid: Museo del Prado, 2011.

Prohaska, Wolfgang, and Gudrun Swoboda. Caravaggio und der internationale Caravaggismus. Vienna and Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2010.

Rossetti, Marta. “Note sul soggiorno napoletano di Angelo Caroselli (1585–1652); appunti sulla parentesi fiorentina e alcune opere inedite.” L’Acropoli: Rivista bimestrale diretta da Giuseppe Galasso 11, no. 5 (2010): 530–59.

Rossetti, Marta. “Strumenti musicali nella vita e nell’opera di Angelo Caroselli (1585–1652), pittore ‘caravaggesco.’” In La musica al tempo di Caravaggio, edited by Stefania Macioce and Enrico de Pascale, 201–18. Rome: Gangemi Editore, 2012.

Salerno, Carlo Stefano. “Precisazioni su Angelo Caroselli.” Storia dell’Arte 76 (1992): 346–61.

Schiavoni, Claudio. “The Parochial System in Early Modern Rome.” In Rome – Amsterdam: Two Growing Cities in Seventeenth-Century Europe, edited by Peter van Kessel and Elisja Schulte, 24–32. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1997.

Semprebene, Daniela. Angelo Caroselli 1585–1652: Un pittore irriverente. Rome: Gangemi Editore, 2011.

Slatkes, Leonard J. Dirck van Baburen (c. 1595–1624): A Dutch Painter in Utrecht and Rome. Utrecht: Haentjes, Dekker & Gumbert,1965.

Slatkes, Leonard J., and Wayne Franits. The Paintings of Hendrick ter Brugghen 1588–1629: Catalogue Raisonné. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2007.

Sluijter, Eric Jan. “Emulating Sensual Beauty: Representations of Danaë from Gossaert to Rembrandt.” Simiolus 27 (1999): 4–45. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3780877

Spear, Richard. “What Is An Original?” In The Italians in Australia: Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Art, edited by David R. Marshall, 15–32. Florence: Centro Di, 2004.

Spezzaferro, Luigi. “Caravaggio accettato: Dal rifiuto al mercato.” in Caravaggio nel iv centenario della Capalla Contarelli, edited by Caterina Volpi, 23–43. Rome: CAM, 2002.

Squarzina, Silvia Danesi. La collezione Giustiniani. 3 vols. Turin: G. Einaudi, 2003.

Vodret, Rossella. “Bartolomeo Manfredi (Ostiano 1582 – Roma 1622).” In I Caravaggeschi: Percorsi e protagonisti, 2 vols., edited by Alessandro Zuccari, 2:515–27. Milan: Skira, 2010..

Zicarelli, Emanuela. “Demografia artistica: Ricerche negli stati delle anime. 2. Per un censimento degli artisti nella parrochia di San Lorenzo in Lucina.” In Arte e immagine del papato Borghese (1605–1621), edited by Bruno Toscano, 33–48. San Casciano: Libro Co. Italia, 2005.

List of Illustrations

Angelo Caroselli,  Pietà,  ca. 1611–12,  Vittrice Chapel, Santa Maria in Vallicella, Rome
Fig. 1 Angelo Caroselli, Pietà, ca. 1611–12, oil on plaster, size unknown. Vittrice Chapel, Santa Maria in Vallicella, Rome (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Dirck van Baburen,  The Entombment, 1617,  Pietà Chapel, San Pietro in Montorio, Rome
Fig. 2 Dirck van Baburen, The Entombment, 1617, oil on canvas, 222 x 142 cm. Pietà Chapel, San Pietro in Montorio, Rome (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Caravaggio,  The Entombment,  ca. 1601–04,  Vatican Museums, Rome
Fig. 3 Caravaggio, The Entombment, ca. 1601–04, oil on canvas, 300 x 203 cm. Vatican Museums, Rome, inv. no. 40386 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Angelo Caroselli,  Man Singing,  ca. 1612–16,  Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Fig. 4 Angelo Caroselli, Man Singing, ca. 1612–16, oil on panel, 53 x 43 cm. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, inv. no. 1583 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Bartolomeo Manfredi,  The Concert,  ca. 1610–12,  Private Collection
Fig. 5 Bartolomeo Manfredi, The Concert, ca. 1610–12, oil on canvas, 135.5 x 97.3 cm. Private Collection (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Dirck van Baburen,  Singing Man, 1622,  Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main
Fig. 6 Dirck van Baburen, Singing Man, 1622, oil on canvas, 71 x 58.8 cm. Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main, inv. no. 2242 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Hendrick ter Brugghen,  Singing Boy, 1627,  Boston Museum of Fine Arts
Fig. 7 Hendrick ter Brugghen, Singing Boy, 1627, oil on canvas, 85.5 x 71.5 cm. Boston Museum of Fine Arts, inv. no. 58.975 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Andrea Caroselli,  Violinist and Courtesan,  ca. 1612–16,  Otto Naumann, Ltd.
Fig. 8 Andrea Caroselli, Violinist and Courtesan, ca. 1612–16, oil on slate, diameter 33cm.Otto Naumann, Ltd., New York (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Andrea Caroselli,  Courtesan Making an Obscene Gesture,  ca. 1612–16,  Lemme Collection, Rome
Fig. 9 Andrea Caroselli, Courtesan Making an Obscene Gesture, ca. 1612–16, oil on canvas 57 x 50 cm. Lemme Collection, Rome (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Dirck van Baburen,  The Procuress, 1622,  Boston Museum of Fine Arts
Fig. 10 Dirck van Baburen, The Procuress, 1622, oil on canvas, 101.5 x 107.6 cm. Boston Museum o f Fine Arts, inv. no. 50.2721 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Dirck van Baburen,  Loose Company, 1623,  Landesmuseum, Mainz
Fig. 11 Dirck van Baburen, Loose Company, 1623, oil on canvas, 108 x 153 cm. Landesmuseum, Mainz, inv. no. 108 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]

Footnotes

  1. 1. Filippo Baldinucci, Notizie dei professori del disegno da Cimabue in qua . . . (1681–1728; repr., Florence: Eurografica, 1974), 3:740–41; Giovanni Battista Passeri, Vite de pittori, scultori ed architettiche hanno lavorato in Roma, morti dal 1641 fino al 1673 (Rome: G. Settari, 1772), 188–89.

  2. 2. The ability to create copies of other artists’ work that are faithful enough to the original to deceive viewers is a leitmotif in artists’ biographies. One finds, for example, the very same abilities praised in such contemporary Dutch artists as Adriaen van der Werff; see Barbara Gaehtgens, Adriaen van der Werff 1659–1722 (Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1987), 433. This aspect of inherent artistic talent is not addressed in the classic study by Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz, Legend, Myth, and Magic in the Image of the Artist, trans. Alastair Lang (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979).

  3. 3. Silvia Danesi Squarzina, La collezione Giustiniani (Turin: G. Einaudi, 2003), 1:455, no. 233 (“Un quadretto piccolo di S. Matteo in tavola alt. pal. 2 1/2 lar. I 1/2 di mano di Angelo Caroselli ad imitation del Caravaggio”). Squarzina does not believe that this copy and others in the collection were acquired as surrogates for famous paintings but rather that they should be considered the result of didactic exercises for young artists who worked under Giustiniani’s auspices. Giustiniani owned additional paintings by Caroselli, a Prodigal Son and a Pygmalion and Galatea; see, respectively, La collezione Giustiniani, 1:299–-300, no. 99 and 1:300-301, no. 101. Caroselli’s practice of copying works of art for profit, both those from older periods as well as contemporary ones, reflects the financial significance accorded to this enterprise in early modern Europe, perhaps nowhere more so than in the oft-times shady and duplicitous art world of early seventeenth-century Rome. For the complicated status of autograph replicas and copies of original paintings in seventeenth-century Italy, see, among others, Richard Spear, “What Is An Original?” in The Italians in Australia. Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Art, ed. David R. Marshall (Florence: Centro Di, 2004), 15–32; and Luigi Spezzaferro, “Caravaggio accettato: Dal rifiuto al mercato,” in Caravaggio nel iv centenario della Capalla Contarelli, ed. Caterina Volpi (Rome: CAM, 2002), 23–25.

  4. 4. See especially, Carlo Stefano Salerno, “Precisazioni su Angelo Caroselli,” Storia dell’Arte 76 (1992): 346–61; Marta Rossetti, “Note sul soggiorno napoletano di Angelo Caroselli (1585–1652), appunti sulla parentesi fiorentina e alcune opere inedite,” L’Acropoli: Rivista bimestrale diretta da Giuseppe Galasso 11, no. 5 (2010): 530–59. A chronological table of Caroselli’s vitae and travels can be found in Daniela Semprebene, Angelo Caroselli 1585–1652: Un pittore irriverente (Rome: Gangemi Editore, 2011), 54–57; see also, 72–82, a section consisting of archival documents.

  5. 5. These are oil-on-plaster paintings, which accounts for their poor condition today; see Semprebene, Angelo Caroselli, 18–19. For a color photograph of the painting and a brief discussion of it, see Francesca Cappelletti, “Angelo Caroselli (Roma 1585–1652),” in I Caravaggeschi: Percorsi e protagonisti, ed. Alessandro Zuccari (Milan: Skira, 2010), 2:346, fig. 1.

  6. 6. See Semprebene, Angelo Caroselli, 21–22.

  7. 7. A reassessment of the archival documents concerning Van Baburen and his family, as well as of the comments written by the Italian physician and aesthete Giulio Mancini, has led me to conclude that the artist was not born around 1595, as is customarily claimed, but two or three years earlier, that is, ca.1592/93; see Wayne Franits, The Paintings of Dirck van Baburen ca. 1592/93–1624: Catalogue Raisonné (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2013), 2–4.Therefore, when Van Baburen departed for Rome in roughly 1612–13, he was a slightly older, more mature artist than Leonard J. Slatkes, the author of the first monograph on the painter, believed; see Leonard J. Slatkes, Dirck van Baburen (c. 1595 – 1624): A Dutch Painter in Utrecht and Rome (Utrecht: Haentjes, Dekker & Gumbert, 1965), 1–2.

  8. 8. Slatkes, Dirck van Baburen, 28, plausibly suggests that Van Baburen stopped in Venice as well as in Bologna. We also know for a fact that the artist spent at least some time in Parma. In the mid-1980s, Carel van Tuyll discovered a reference in a late eighteenth-century manuscript to an altarpiece, TheMartyrdom of Saint Sebastian, which he painted for the church of Santa Maria dei Servi in that city in 1615; see also Franits, Dirck van Baburen, 238, cat. L7.

  9. 9. Didier Bodart, Les peintres des Pays-Bas Méridionaux et de la Principauté de Liège à Rome au XVIIème siècle (Brussels and Rome: Institut historique belge de Rome, 1970), 1:106, points out that the papacy had provided tax exemptions to the inhabitants of several streets in this area as a way of encouraging artists and artisans to move there. For the history and development of parishes especially during the Counter-Reformation, see Claudio Schiavoni, “The Parochial System in Early Modern Rome,” in Rome – Amsterdam: Two Growing Cities in Seventeenth-Century Europe, ed. Peter van Kessel and Elisja Schulte (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1997), 24–32.

  10. 10. For the parish of San Lorenzo in Lucina and the multinational artists in residence there, see Emanuela Zicarelli, “Demografia artistica: Ricerche negli stati delle anime. 2. Per un censimento degli artisti nella parrochia di San Lorenzo in Lucina,” in Arte e immagine del papato Borghese (1605–1621), ed. Bruno Toscano (San Casciano: Libro Co. Italia, 2005), 33–48.

  11. 11. Sonia Amadio, “Demografia artistica: Ricerche negli stati delle anime. 1. Artisti famosi e nomi senza opere nella parrochia di Sant’Andrea delle Fratte,” in Arte e immagine, 17–31. The author counts 125 painters of varying nationalities inhabiting the parish of Sant’Andrea della Fratte between 1607 and 1613 and 1616 and 1621. For this parish, see also the classic study by G. J. Hoogewerff, Nederlandsche kunstenaars te Rome (1600–1725): Uittreksels uit de parochiale archieven (The Hague: Gedrukt ter Algemeene Landsdrukkerij, 1942), 224–25. 

  12. 12. The precise location where the four gentlemen lived is not declared, but it must have been on the Piazza della Trinità della Monte, where Van Baburen and De Haen had resided the previous year. Hoogewerff, Nederlandsche kunstenaars te Rome, 230, records the notary’s statement “Als in het voorgaande jaar,” which strongly suggests this. Régnier possibly took the place of Cornelia Brabrandia, who had been living with Van Baburen and De Haen in 1619. For Régnier’s lodging situation with the two Dutchmen and a servant and apprentice in 1620, see Annick Lemoine, Nicolas Régnier (alias Niccolò Renieri) ca. 1588–1667: Peintre, collectionneur et marchand d’art (Paris: Arthena, 2007), 28–29, 370, who clarifies and amplifies Hoogewerff’s findings.

  13. 13. Van Baburen and the aforementioned David de Haen received this commission from Pietro Cussida, a wealthy Spanish aesthete from Zaragoza (Saragossa), the capitol of Aragon, who had arrived in Rome by 1602 to serve as a diplomatic agent to the papacy for Philip III (r. 1598–1621) and then, briefly, for Philip IV (r. 1621–65). For this commission, see further Franits, Dirck van Baburen, 9–16, 78–81, cat. A3; 97–99, cat. A7; 196–97, cat. R16; 235, cat. L3.

  14. 14. Franits, Dirck van Baburen, 11. Slatkes, Dirck van Baburen, 24, 36, 38, sees a relationship between the “seated” Christ in Van Baburen’s Entombment and a similar pose in an early painting by Rubens of the same subject (Borghese Gallery, Rome). This is certainly plausible.

  15. 15. For decades, Manfredi’s work and very person were shrouded in mystery–the very fact that he left no signed or dated pictures has plunged the question of his stylistic development into near continual debate. For Manfredi, see Mina Gregori, et al., Dopo Caravaggio: Bartolomeo Manfredi e la Manfrediana Methodus, exh. cat. (Cremona: Museo Civico ala Ponzone, 1987); Nicole Hartje, Bartolomeo Manfredi (1582–1622): Ein Nachfolger Caravaggios und seine europäische Wirkung; Monographie und Werkverzeichnis (Weimar: VDG Verlag and Datenbank für Geisteswissenschaften, 2004); and Rossella Vodret, “Bartolomeo Manfredi (Ostiano 1582 – Roma 1622),” in I Caravaggeschi, 2:515–27; and, more recently, Gianni Papi, Bartolomeo Manfredi (Soncino: Edizioni dei Soncino, 2013).

  16. 16. By far, Hartje, Bartolomeo Manfredi, 117–60 and passim, constitutes the most thorough scholarly examination to date of Manfredi’s influential method.

  17. 17. For Caroselli’s painting, see Wolfgang Prohaska and Gudrun Swoboda, Caravaggio und der internationale Caravaggismus (Vienna and Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2010), 152–59, whose technical analysis reveals that at some point before 1837, its shape was altered: the original oval fir panel was attached to a square pinewood panel.

  18. 18. For example, Cappelletti, “Angelo Caroselli,” 345.

  19. 19. For Van Baburen’s painting, see Franits, Dirck van Baburen, 133–35, cat. A24.

  20. 20. According to Prohaska and Swoboda, Caravaggio, 158–59, this glittering object is actually a Tiberian or Claudian Roman imperial coin. Part of this coin’s inscription reads BRA [D or N], which the authors construe as an allusion to the Brandani family, who patronized the artist and perhaps commissioned this particular painting.

  21. 21. In Caroselli’s painting, the man’s open-handed gesture seems to ward off the onlooker, while in Van Baburen’s painting it probably identifies the man as a maat-zanger (measure singer), the one who provided the musical measure or beat. In addition to the musical concept of measure, the gesture is conceivably related to notions of temperance; see Marcus Dekiert, Musikanten in der Malerei der niederländischen Carvaggio-Nachfolge . . . (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2003), 103, 226; Leonard J. Slatkes and Wayne Franits,The Paintings of Hendrick ter Brugghen 1588–1629: Catalogue Raisonné (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2007), 199, 207, 209; Franits, Dirck van Baburen, 134n7.

  22. 22. Prohaska and Swoboda, Caravaggio, 158n16, cite Van Baburen’s painting but wonder whether the Dutch artist had painted the subject during his Roman period and hence would have influenced Caroselli. Likewise, Marta Rossetti, “Strumenti musicali nella vita e nell’opera di Angelo Caroselli (1585–1652), pittore ‘caravaggesco,’” in La musica al tempo di Caravaggio, ed. Stefania Macioce and Enrico de Pascale (Rome: Gangemi Editore, 2012), 203, cites the presumed precedence of paintings by Van Baburen and Ter Brugghen to explain the presence of this motif in Caroselli’s picture. For Ter Brugghen’s two paintings of singers, see Slatkes and Franits, Hendrick ter Brugghen, 207–08, cat. A85, pl. 84; 210–11, cat. A88, pl. 87.

  23. 23. For this issue, see Cappelletti, “Angelo Caroselli,” 345. Cappelletti also cites a document dated 1614 in which Caroselli declares that he will satisfy a debt with the payment of two paintings, one of which portrayed chess players.

  24. 24. For this painting, see Semprebene, Angelo Caroselli, 177.

  25. 25. For Danae as a model of questionable virtue, see Eric Jan Sluijter, “Emulating Sensual Beauty: Representations of Danaë from Gossaert to Rembrandt,” Simiolus 27 (1999): 28–30, 34–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3780877

  26. 26. For this painting, see Semprebene, Angelo Caroselli, 98, who convincingly demonstrates Caroselli’s authorship.

  27. 27. For Ribera, who like Caroselli, seems to have exerted his greatest impact upon Van Baburen during his Roman period, see, most recently, Gianni Papi, Ribera a Roma (Soncino: Edizioni dei Soncino, 2007) and Javier Portus, et al., El joven Ribera, exh. cat. (Madrid: Museo del Prado, 2011).

  28. 28. It culminated, in some respects, in my overview of Dutch genre painting that was published in 2004: Wayne Franits, Dutch Seventeenth-Century Genre Painting: Its Stylistic and Thematic Evolution (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004).

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DOI: 10.5092/jhna.2013.5.2.5
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Wayne Franits, "Dirck van Baburen and the “Self-Taught” Master, Angelo Caroselli," Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art 5:2 (Summer 2013) DOI: 10.5092/jhna.2013.5.2.5