Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio died in mysterious circumstances in 1610, when he was not but 40, however his radical originality, marked by exaggerated chiaroscuro and arresting realism, went on with out him, influencing painters in Europe’s predominant centres of artwork manufacturing up till the 1630s. Collectively recognized now because the Caravaggisti, these artists have been staging a gradual however mounting comeback, as students and museum-goers come to understand their immense, if considerably by-product skills. Dutch, French and Italian Caravaggisti have had vital exhibits in recent times, and now it’s Flanders’ flip.
This month, the Museum of Fantastic Arts Ghent will mount the very first monographic present in regards to the Antwerp painter Theodoor Rombouts (1597-1637), who, following a keep in Italy from 1616 to 1624, settled in again dwelling as a dyed-in-the-wool Caravaggesque painter with a thriving studio. Whereas his works are within the collections of quite a lot of main museums, he has fallen up to now between the cracks of artwork historical past that the present’s catalogue would be the first thorough examine printed, says the curator Frederica Van Dam. That includes 50 artworks, together with newly found and freshly cleaned items, Theodoor Rombouts: Virtuoso of Flemish Caravaggism attracts on loans from the Museo Nacional del Prado and the Musée du Louvre, in addition to collections in Jap Europe and Puerto Rico.
Theodoor Rombouts’s The Tooth Puller (round 1620-25)
Just like the Dutch Caravaggisti he communed with in Rome in his early 20s, Rombouts excelled at style scenes, which he typically executed in giant, landscape-style codecs, similar to The Tooth Puller (round 1620-25), which is greater than two metres vast. The present will characteristic two variations—one in all them the Prado’s—and new analysis signifies the newbie dentist is a self-portrait.
Rombouts managed to fuse a southern European chiaroscuro with a northern European urge for food for elegant textiles and a lighter palette. Although his oeuvre is comparatively small—round 40 work, based on Van Dam, 31 of which will probably be on present in Ghent—the present places his achievement in a broader context by mixing in work by his Caravaggisti contemporaries.
Rombouts’s supreme ability as a painter of musical devices is revealed when his Lute Participant (round 1625), on mortgage from the Philadelphia Museum of Artwork, in comparison with comparable works by Holland’s Dirck van Baburen and Hendrick ter Brugghen. Rombouts rendered the instrument with nice precision, revealing particulars of particular person strings and the soundboard’s wealthy patina, whereas the Dutch variations are mere props.
The present additionally contains Rombouts’s Lady Taking part in a Guitar (round 1625-30), on mortgage from a personal assortment, which Van Dam cites as a brand new discovery.
Baroque’s large beasts
Rombouts achieved nice fame in Antwerp throughout his quick lifetime, and his admirers included Anthony van Dyck (whose chic portrait of Rombouts, at Munich’s Alte Pinakothek, can’t be loaned). Fairly than competing with Peter Paul Rubens—Antwerp’s, and arguably Europe’s, dominant artist on the time—or Van Dyck himself, Rombouts relied on these style scenes, together with spiritual commissions in smaller Flemish cities, to carve his personal area of interest in a crowded market. And it was the posthumous status of these two giants that has saved Rombouts’ achievement within the shadows, Van Dam says.
The artist’s style works would have initially had a moralising message. The scenes of card gamers, on mortgage from museums in Antwerp and Warsaw, have been pageant-filled warnings in regards to the risks of playing. As we speak we might fear much less about card-playing as a supply of societal strife and focus as an alternative on the good pleasure these works may give us, with their beautiful colors and riveting compositions.
Rombouts is “technically an incredible painter”, says Wayne Franits, a professor of artwork historical past at Syracuse College and a famous scholar of Holland’s Utrecht Caravaggisti, who has contributed to the present’s catalogue. “There’s little doubt about it—he simply is.”
• Theodoor Rombouts: Virtuoso of Flemish Caravaggism, Museum of Fantastic Arts Ghent, 21 January-23 April
