Bulletin du Musée National de Varsovie (37.1996)

Indeed, the large size and the subject both suggest it must have been a public
commission. Again Manfredi played a role in the genesis of Baburen’s picture.
The body of Porsenna’s secretary, mistakenly killed in Scaevola’s assassination
attempt, is a quotation from Manfredi’s Cain and Abel in Florence.31 These
Manfredi influences, large and small, indicate the central role Baburen played
in the introduction and spread of the “Manfrediana Methodus” in the north
long before Sandrart had even conceived of the term.33 34 35

The appearance of these new works datable to 1621 also requires that I
revise my earlier opinion concerning Baburen’s Offering to Ceres (Fig. 4),39 in
a French private collection. When I wrote my monograph on Baburen, I was
uncertain as to exactly where this picture should be placed. At that time only
one Baburen work carried a date of 1621, the very different Boy Playing a
small Whistle, in Utrecht.36 Although this picture is important for its role in
introducing single-figured musicians into the vocabulary of Utrecht painting,
it was of little help in establishing the date of a large history picture. Thus I was
unsure whether the Offering was executed at the end of Baburen’s Roman stay
or at the very beginning of his Utrecht career. The problem was complicated
by the fact that the Offering had close stylistic affinities with Baburen’s late
Roman period Capture of Christ in the Borghese collection.37 This painting,
with its crisper forms, sharper light quality and costume details now make it
clear that it must have been made very soon after Baburen returned to Utrecht;
indeed, it is probably the first work after his Roman sojourn. It is now also
obvious that this picture marks the beginning of the artistic relationship
between ter Brugghen and Baburen. Baburen’s central male figure, with his
shadowed lost profile set off by a serrated baret worn at a raish angle, must
have immediately caught ter Brugghen’s imagination for a similar type appears
first in his 1621 Transverse Fluteplayer, and again, in the cut-down Kansas City
Beheading of St. John the Baptist (Fig. 5).38 The last digit of the date of the
Beheading, unfortunately, is missing, but Nicolson suggested 1622,39 a not
unreasonable assumption given the relationship with Baburen and ter
Brugghen’s own 1621 Cassel Fluteplayer.40

An important ter Brugghen Annunciation (Fig. 6), known from photographs
but rarely seen, has recently emerged from a New York private collection and
is now on the London art market.41 As tacking pulls are visible on all four sides

33 Dopo Caravaggio, 1987, cat. 13, lllust. in color.

34 For the significance of this phrase see the various discussions in Dopo Caravaggio, 1987, passim.

35 Slatkes, Dirck van Baburen.., op. cit., cat. A8, Fig. 12; see also pp.54-55.

36 Ibid., cat. A9, Fg. 30; see also pp.88, 95-96.

37 Ibid., cat. A7, Fig. 11; see also pp.50-54.

38 Nicolson, Hendrick Terbrugghen, op. cit., cat. A12, Plate 28, dated to 1622.

39 Ibid., cat.,A12, Plate 28. See also Leonard J. Slatkes in: Hendrick Terbrugghen in America,
Dayton/Baltimore 1965/66, cat. 1.

40 Significantly, P. J.J. van Thiel, “De aanbiddmg der koningen en ander vroeg werk van Flendrick
ter Brugghen,” Bulletin van bet Rijksmuseum, 19, 1971, p.110, suggests a slightly earlier date of
1621 or 1622.

41 Slatkes in: Utrecht/Braunschweig, exh. 1986/7, pp.46 and 168, under cat. 32, and p.166, Fig. 99.

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