Saint Bartholomew,
oil on canvas, 109.5 x 85 cm, framed

Provenance:
possibly in the collection of the Viennese painter Eugen Felix (1873–1906);
possibly with Knoedler & Co., New York, 1985 (according to the literature);
Private collection, New York and then Vienna

Literature:
possibly T. v. Frimmel, Lexikon der Wiener Gemäldesammlungen, Munich 1913, vol. I, p. 340;
T. Döring, Studien zur Künstlerfamilie Van Bronchorst: Jan Gerritsz. (ca. 1603-1661), Johannes (1627-1656) und Gerrit van Bronchorst (ca. 1636-1673) in Utrecht und Amsterdam, Alfter 1993, p. 137, p. 229, B 5a, illustrated p. 383 (as a copy after Johannes van Bronchorst, tentatively attributed to Caravaggio by Mina Gregori);
A. Hanzl, in: J. Kräftner (ed.), Menschenbilder – Götterwelten. The Worlds of Gods and Men, exhibition catalogue, Vienna 2016, p. 91, mentioned under no. 12 (as a copy after Johannes van Bronchorst, and attributed to Caravaggio by Mina Gregori)

We are grateful to John Gash for his help in cataloguing the present painting.

The quality of this evidently Caravaggist work is markedly high, and indeed Mina Gregori once tentatively attributed it to Caravaggio himself (see literature).

The present work relates to a painting of almost the same composition which is conserved in the Liechtenstein collection in Vienna and which is signed by Johannes van Bronchorst and dated 1652 (inv. no. GE 119). The composition of the Liechtenstein Bronchorst is a slightly longer format. Bronchorst was from Utrecht and was a student of the Caravaggist painter, Gerard van Honthorst. He is documented as being in Rome from 1648 to 1650. Johannes van Bronchorst would have therefore executed his version of Saint Bartholomew soon after his return to Holland, possibly taking inspiration from a prototype he had seen during his time in Rome.

However, a painting attributed to Caravaggio, which represented an ‘Apostle’ was recorded amongst the seventeenth-century holdings of Dutch collections and was documented as part of the collection of the Chevalier Jan-Baptiste Anthoine, Postmasters of Antwerp. It is cited as number 127 in his inventory of 1691: ‘Een half figuer appostel Thadeus van Michiel Angel Caravagio soo men gelooft’ (see J. Denucé, The Antwerp Art galleries Inventories of the Art-collections in Antwerp in the 16th and 17th centuries, Antwerp 1932, p. 93).

In the present painting, Saint Bartholomew can be identified by the knife he holds in his left hand: an allusion to his martyrdom. No further reference is made to the violent sufferings of the saint, in contrast with traditional sixteenth and seventeenth century representations of the subject. Instead, the monumental form of the Saint emerges from a dark background; his right shoulder is bare and his head is down, giving the impression that he is contemplating the fate that awaits him.

The choice of iconography, the extreme realism of the representation and the compositional development of the subject in a dramatic interplay of chiaroscuro effects, all point to the pictorial revolution achieved by Caravaggio in early seventeenth-century Rome, and diffused throughout Europe by his followers. The present Saint Bartholomew is especially striking thanks to the attention that has been given to anatomical details such as his swollen veins, the almost vaporous softness of his beard, the deep wrinkles of his face and the highly realist details like the wart on the subject’s right cheek. This evidently studied naturalism, the expressive power of the subject, and the artist’s singular deployment of light to achieve the monumentality of the figure, presented almost theatrically, are all qualities close to the work of Caravaggio, who during the first years of the seventeenth century created a new pictorial language that dramatically revolutionised painting in Europe.