(Utrecht c. 1590–after 1623)
The Duet,
oil on canvas, 97 x 82 cm, framed

Provenance:
F. Pospisil collection, Venice, circa 1943;
with Frezzati, Venice;
Jeronimo Bertran Cuisiné collection, Mexico, 1964;
Private Collection, U.S.A.;
sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 9 June 2011, lot 41 (as Studio of Dirck van Baburen);
Private collection;
sale, Christie’s, London, 4 December 2012, lot 9 (as Attributed to Dirck van Baburen)

Literature:
Un Olandese figlio spiritual d’Italia: Van Baburen, in: Arte Figurativa Antica e Moderna, III, 1955, p. 29 (as Dirck van Baburen);
J. R. Judson, Gerrit van Honthorst: A Discussion of His Position in Dutch Art, The Hague, 1956, p. 67, note 3 (as Gerrit van Honthorst);
L. J. Slatkes, Dirck van Baburen (c. 1595–1624), a Dutch Painter in Utrecht and Rome, Utrecht, 1965, p. 138 (as a copy of a lost Baburen);
B. Nicholson, The International Caravaggesque Movement: Lists of Pictures by Caravaggio and His Followers throughout Europe from 1590 to 1650, Oxford, 1979, p. 18 (as a copy after a lost Baburen);
B. Nicholson, Caravaggism in Europe, I, Turin, 1989, p. 55, under no. 1061 (as a copy after a lost original);
W. Franits, Dirck van Baburen, Amsterdam, 2013, cat. no. W8, p. 185, plate 45 (as ‘a very high quality workshop replica of a now lost original by Van Baburen, that is, if such an original ever existed’)

Exhibited:
Mexico City, Museo Nacional de Arte Moderna, Pintura Neerlandesa en Mexico Siglos XV, XVI y XVII, 1964, no. 10, (as Dirck van Baburen)

The present painting was long considered a copy or workshop replica based on a lost original by Van Baburen. A cleaning carried out a few years ago, in the process of which obscuring overpainting was removed, revealed the painting’s superior artistic quality, which convinced such experts as Paul Huys Janssen and Peter van den Brink to accept the painting as an autograph work by Van Barburen after they had examined the painting in the original. Two further versions of this composition are known: one is in the collection of the Counts of Schönborn-Wiesentheid in Pommersfelden Palace, the other belongs to the N. Kohlhepp Collection, Louisville, Kentucky. Wayne Franits, who published the painting as a workshop replica in 2012 in his monograph on Van Baburen, revised his opinion (in a letter to the owner dated 23 February 2014) upon having seen the painting in its restored condition. He now considers it to be a joint product by Dirck van Baburen and his workshop, acknowledging the male figure as autograph while believing that the female figure was painted by the hand of a workshop member. Paul Huys Janssen, director of the Noordbrabantsmuseum, s’Hertogenbosch, who has examined the painting in the original, has endorsed it as a fully autograph work and dates it to around 1622 (oral communication to the consignor). Peter van den Brink, director of the Suermondt-Ludwig Museum in Aachen, agrees with Paul Huys Janssen in his attribution (personal communication to the consignor).

Stylistically, the present painting most readily compares to Van Baburen’s Matchmaker in the Museum of Fine Art, Boston (1622) and to a Lute Player in the Centraal Museum in Utrecht (also 1622). Both paintings are characterised by angular draperies and rich and warm colours. Interestingly enough, the model posing for the female figure of the present painting recurs in Baburen’s Cimon and Pero in the York Art Gallery (1618–1628) and in a further version of the Matchmaker in the Residence of Würzburg (1620s).
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Since his earliest childhood, Dirck van Baburen had lived in Utrecht, where the records of the Guild of Saint Luke for 1611 mention him as a student of Paulus Moreelse. Between 1612 and 1615 the young artist sojourned in Rome, where he worked together with his older compatriot David de Haen. He was among the first members of the Bentveughels society of artists. In Rome, Van Baburen quickly came under the spell of Caravaggio and his followers, such as Bartolomeo Manfredi. Van Baburen’s Entombment from 1617 in the Cappella della Pietà in San Pietro in Montorio exhibits distinctly Caravaggesque features and clearly depends on Caravaggio’s Entombment in the Vatican Museums. Van Baburen’s art soon became fashionable among such high-ranking patrons as Vincenzo Giustiniani and Cardinal Scipione Borghese. In the late 1620s, Van Baburen returned to Utrecht, where he, together with Hendrick ter Brugghen and Gerard van Honthorst, established the school of the Utrecht Caravaggisti. In his art, he combined such Caravaggesque features as a powerful chiaroscuro with motifs informed by Dutch genre, mythological, and history painting. Van Baburen’s Matchmaker (now in Boston) belonged to Jan Vermeer, who depicted the picture in two of his paintings (see illustration). Around 1629, the historiographer Constantijn Huygens remarked that Van Baburen was one of the most important Dutch artists of the first decades of the seventeenth century.


Additional image:
Johannes Vermeer, A Young Woman seated at a Virginal
© The National Gallery, London. Salting Bequest, 1910