2007 Catalogue - Colnaghi

Fig. 4
Gerrit van Honthorst (1595 – 1656)
Diana and her Attendants with two Greyhounds
Acquired by a private collector
This rare early painting, datable between 1616 and
1618, which was sold to a French private collector, was
painted shortly after the artist’s move from Rome to
Naples, when Ribera was still working strongly under
the influence of Caravaggio. Particularly remarkable is
the sharp chiaroscuro with which the fish, held by the
saint in his right hand, is painted: a pictorial tour de
force of light and shadow which underscores Christ’s
charge to saints Andrew and Peter - “Follow me and I
will make you fishers of men”. It is this which gives the
painting its quality of tactile realism, which, together
with the carefully controlled lighting, finds parallels in
the work of the northern caravaggesque masters.
Another great Neapolitan painting is Luca Giordano’s
Entombment [fig 3] sold to the Memorial Art Gallery
Rochester, New York. Although Giordano was later to
acquire a reputation for bravura brushwork and a light
tonality which looks forward to the Rococo, his early
works of the 1650s, such as this monumental
altarpiece, show him to have been strongly influenced
by the sombre, gritty realism of Ribera, who may have
taught him. The tragic intensity of the work of that
other great Neapolitan master, Mattia Preti, whose
Burial of St Andrew (Sant’Andrea della Valle) also
probably inspired him.
The influence of Caravaggio was also felt north of the
Alps, particularly among the artists of the Utrecht
OPPOSITE Fig. 3
Luca Giordano (1634 – 1705)
The Entombment
Acquired by Rochester Memorial Art Gallery, New York
10
caravaggesque school such as Gerrit van Honthorst.
Honthorst spent his early years, between 1610 and
1615, working in Rome, where he acquired the
nickname Gherardo della Notte, because of his
celebrated candlelit scenes. However, his style changed
when he moved back to the north and, during the
later 1620s, he gradually abandoned his earlier
caravaggesque style in favour of a more evenly lit, suave
classicism and mythological subject matter, which
appealed to the courtly tastes of patrons such as
Charles I and the Stadholder Prince Frederik Henry of
Orange. It was while working for Prince Frederik,
either just before, or shortly after his sojourn at
the English Court in 1628, that Honthorst painted
Diana and her Attendants with two Greyhounds, [fig 4]
which was acquired last year by a British private
collecter. Like many of the pictures painted for
Charles I, such as Mercury presenting the Liberal
Arts to Apollo and Diana (Royal Collection, Hampton
Court), this grand, and exquisitely painted
mythological picture, recorded in the 1632 inventory
of the Stadholder’s collection in Noordeinde, probably
contains portraits of ladies of the Stadholder’s court in
the pastoral fancy dress which became fashionable in
court circles in Holland during the second quarter of
the seventeenth century.