(active 1620/1629)
A scene from the New Testament, possibly Saint Matthew in the Counting House,
dated upper centre: 1638,
oil on canvas, 100 x 150 cm, unframed

Provenance:
Private collection, Germany, since the 19th Century

The present canvas is an important addition to the confirmed oeuvre of the refined but mysterious Northern Carravaggist master R. van Adelo. The master was first identified in 1984 by C. J. A. Wansink of the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie in The Hague (according to a private letter, dated 19 January 1984). Wansink compares the present work with a painting dated and signed: ‘1625 R. van Adelo’, entitled Joseph before the Pharaoh formerly in the Walraff-Richartz Museum, Köln. A comparison between the present picture and van Adelo’s other four known works further confirms such an attribution. The gaudily clad youth on the right, sporting a striped sash, hands over a money bag to the turbaned man sitting at a table (‘banca’ in Italian) over which a green drape has been placed. The oriental dress of the man could indicate a biblical subject, possibly Saint Matthew, in his role as tax collector, before Christ appeared to him.

Identified as a painter of the Utrecht School on stylistic grounds, van Adelo’s work most closely reassembles that of Dirck van Baburen, who was also active in Rome. The name ‘R van Adelo’ is known only from two canvases he signed. The first, St. John the Baptist Preaching, was last recorded in a private collection, Lübeck, Germany, and is signed and dated 1628. The second was the aforementioned Joseph Before Pharoah (sale, Sotheby’s, London, 8 April 1987, lot 55).