| Nearly always described as one of the leading northern Caravaggists, Hendrick Ter Brugghen must also be seen as an original, exceptionally gifted artist who created convincing characters, moods, states of mind, all of which enriched the narrative vocabulary of the seventeenth century. Little is actually known about this genial artist who died prematurely at age forty-two. On the basis of his son Robert's gift in 1707 to the town of Deventer (of four of his father's paintings), we know that Hendrick was bora to Catholic parents in the province of Overijssel near Deventer, probably in 1588. Hendrick himself reported that in 1615 he was twenty-five, indicating he might have been bora as late as 1590. Hendrick's father moved the Ter Brugghen family to Utrecht when Hendrick was still young, where, according to Joachim von Sandrart, Hendrick studied with Abraham Bloemaert until about 1603/4. Hendrick then departed for Italy while still quite young. He may have arrived there by 1604 and spent ten years living mostly in Rome (where he reportedly met Rubens*), but we know he also visited Milan in the summer of 1614 and traveled to other cities as well. He returned to Utrecht in 1614 accompanied by another artist. There he married in 1616 (he and his wife Jacoba had a number of children) and joined the guild in 1616/17. After 1620 Ter Brugghen and Baburen* may have shared a studio for a time. Although some scholars suggest a second trip to Italy around 1620/21, Ter Brugghen seems to have remained in his adopted city for the rest of his life, dying in November 1629 at the height of his artistic powers. If, as is generally accepted, Ter Brugghen arrived in Rome by 1604, he would have been one of the few Dutch artists who could have met Caravaggio (who left in 1606), and he was the first of the Caravaggists to return to Utrecht in 1614. (Baburen and Honthorst came to Rome much later, around 1610 and 1612, respectively, and returned around 1620). Curiously, we know nothing of Ter Brugghen's work in Italy, except that he was affiliated with the Marchese Giustiniani and is possibly the artist who produced a 5/. Peter shown at night by firelight and a Christ at a Column that are mentioned in Giustiniani's inventory. His earliest known dated paintings are St. Peter Praying (dated 1616, Utrecht, Centraal Museum) and the Adoration of the Magi (dated 1619, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum). These pictures and his Crowning of Thorns (dated 1620, Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst) date several years after his return to Holland. The Adoration reflects Ter Brugghen's study of Bloemaert, while the Crowning of Thorns shows Ter Bnigghen's personal and original assimilation of and departure from Caravaggist tenets. Its lighting is not based on Caravaggio's dramatic chiaroscuro, but uses a penumbral shadow, adding a more diffuse and subtle mood to the story. Some characters are in the plebeian mold so characteristic of Caravaggio, but are also inspired by native sources like Lucas van Leyden. Ter Brugghen learned from van Leyden to inject a sense of irony and pathos into his scenes. Most ironic of all is the pathetic old man who joins the circle of men mocking Christ, and who is guided by an unseen younger soldier into feebly striking Christ's bowed head with a stick. Like all great artists, Ter Brugghen absorbed many lessons (he also looked at Durer, Orazio Gentileschi, and Carlo Saraceni, for example) and understood the fundamental device of contrast–of light and dark, youth and old age, the sacred and the secular, the knowing and the unknowing, the cynical and the innocent, the powerful and the weak, while also drawing subtle nuances into his pictorial story to create resonance and emotional depth. The Adoration and the Crowning are among the earliest dated works of a brief career that we know spanned only the last nine years of Ter Brugghen's life. He divided those years between compelling and richly conceived religious historical subjects, and equally original interpretations of secular themes. Ter Brugghen's later religious works include the Incredulity of St. Thomas (Amsterdam, Rijksmuscum) and the Calling of St. Matthew (signed and dated 1621, Utrecht, Centraal Museum), both of which feature a similar bespectacled old man seen in profile. His two most celebrated religious subjects are the Crucifixion with Mary and St. John (signed and dated 162?, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art) and the deeply felt St. Sebastian Tended by St. Irene (signed and dated 1625, Oberlin, Allen Memorial Art Museum). Some of his later religious paintings follow the precepts and compositional elements seen in the Crowning of 1620 (see, for example, Lazarus and the Rich Man, signed and dated 1625, Utrecht, Centraal Museum, or the two versions of the story of Jacob, Laban, and Leah, one signed and dated 1627, London, National Gallery, and the other signed and dated 162[8?], Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum). Other works explore a more reductive, simplified, and elemental vision, often with stronger Caravaggesque elements than were found in his earlier known paintings (for example, King David Harping, Surrounded by Angels, signed and dated 1628, Warsaw, Muzeum Narodoweor the Liberation of St. Peter, signed and dated 1629, Schwerin, Mecklenburghisches Landesmuseum). In each of the latter two works, however, Ter Brugghen was experimenting and using sources and devices best suited to the mood and purposes of his particular narrative. Perhaps the most moving of his late works is the haunting portrayal of the The Deliverance of St. Peter (The Hague, Mauritshuis), in which the aged saint is somewhat confused by the sudden answer to his prayers, here Ter Brugghen's device of injecting the most human traits into sacred settings makes his stories remain alive, convincing, and at the same time profoundly spiritual. Besides his religious paintings, Ter Brugghen produced a series of secular scenes in which his favorite themes were musicians portrayed in halflength form. His two early examples {Flute Players, pendants, signed and dated 1621, Kassel, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen) are marvelous allusions to sensuality (touch, sight, hearing), sexuality, and temporality, with many evocations of the sense of passing time. These young male models also on occasion crept into his religious works (note the young man with the plumed hat in the Calling of St. Matthew of the same year). Musicians, lute players, bagpipers, violin and viol players (both men and women) captured his imagination and helped to establish the tradition for such secular subject matter that appears on and off in Western art to the present day. Certainly Ter Brugghen's works, based on Manfredi and Orazio Gentileschi among others, inspired in turn such later allusions to the senses by Hals, Piazzetta, and Manet. Ter Brugghen also produced related subjects, such as the Boy Lighting a Pipe from a Candle (signed and dated 1623, Hungary, Erlau Museum) and the Gamblers (signed and dated 1623, Minneapolis Institute of Arts). If character was an important element in his biblical narratives, boldly volumetric forms and curves (often accented by striped fabric, curling feathers, bending hats as well as instruments) helped underscore the sensuality of Ter Brugghen's secular images. Though Ter Brugghen did not establish an active studio, as his younger contemporaries Baburen and Honthorst did, he influenced a number of important figures, including Baburen, Bijlert, Jan Lievens, Paulus Bor, Leonard Bramer and, to an extent, Georges de La Tour. His most gifted interpreter was, however, Vermeer, whose early religious paintings, such as Christ in the House of Mary and Martha (dated 1654, Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland), are clearly based on Ter Brugghen's manner, while his early genre works, such as his Procuress (dated 1656, Dresden, GcmSldegalerie Alte Meister), "completed the revolution that Ter Brugghen, and behind him the Italian Caravaggesques, had initiated" (to quote Benedict Nicolson). |
