(Utrecht circa 1590 - after 1623)
Saint James the Greater,
oil on canvas, 76.5 x 63 cm, framed

Provenance:
sale, Finarte, Milan, 20 November 1955, lot 537 (as Dirck van Baburen);
Private collection, Italy;
where acquired by the present owner

Literature:
W. Franits, The Paintings of Dirck van Baburen, Amsterdam 2012, p. 249, no. U1 (as unidentified and therefore ‘no Definitive Judgement’)

We are grateful to Paul Huys Janssen for suggesting that the present painting is an early work by Dirck van Baburen, dating from his stay in Italy, after inspection of the original.

Wayne Franits does not accept the attribution to Dirck van Baburen, on the basis of a high-resolution digital photograph.

In 1611 Dirck van Baburen is recorded in Utrecht as a pupil of Paulus Moreelse (1571–1638), and he left for Italy only a year later. One of his most important commissions was executed in 1615, when the artist was in Parma to paint an altarpiece for the Church of Santa Maria dei Servi. He spent the following years in Rome, until 1621, when he returned to Utrecht and where he died in 1624.

Together with Hendrick ter Brugghen (1588–1629) and Gerard van Honthorst (1592–1656), van Baburen is among the foremost of the Utrecht Caravaggisti. During the 1610s, Caravaggism was the most popular artistic movement in Italy. Inspired by Caravaggio and his early followers, Baburen’s painterly style is very expressive and marked by broad brush strokes and strong highlights, which are particularly evident in his depiction of the head of the Saint. The present painting depicting Saint James the Greater shows these classical traits of Baburen’s style, and can be dated, according to Paul Huys Janssen, to the period when the artist was in Rome, between 1616-17 and 1620, or perhaps a little earlier, when he was still in Parma. During this time, his work was greatly influenced by the paintings of the Spanish born Jusepe de Ribera (1591–1656), who was working on an altarpiece for the Church of San Prospero in Parma around 1611. Furthermore, Ribera was in Rome from 1612 until May-July 1616, when he left for Naples. It is possible that Baburen and Ribera knew each other, or where connected in some way (see X. F. Salomon, The young Ribera, in: The Burlington Magazine 153, 2011, pp. 475-478).