Rocznik Muzeum Narodowego w Warszawie (1(37).2012/2013)

Filip Chmielewski

I The Judgement of Midas from the Lublin
Province Museum - an Early Work by Gerrit
van Honthorst?
The collections of the Lublin Museum contain a big painting of outstanding artistic merit -
The Judgement of Midas. As yet, no attempt has been made to attribute it to a specific artist. At
present it is listed among the museum’s exhibits as a work by the “circle of Caravaggio,” and
is dated to the first quarter of the seventeenth century. In the 1960s both Jan Białostocki and
Andrzej Chudzikowski emphasized the painting’s worth, and this was reiterated in the 1990s
by Maciej Monkiewicz from the National Museum in Warsaw.1 Before World War II, the
painting was housed in the Resursa Kupiecka Lubelska [Lublin Trade Association], although
it is unclear how it came to be in their its possession. In 1939, together with other paintings
(including Pilate Washing His Hands by Hendrick ter Brugghen),2 it was deposited in the
Municipal Museum in Lublin, located in the former Municipal Library building, where it
remained in storage throughout the war. After the war, the collections of the Resursa were
transferred to Lublin Castle, which housed the Lublin Museum from 1958 to 1971. In 1993
the painting was entered into the Castle’s catalogue records, and in 1999 it was exhibited in
the same room as ter Brugghen’s Pilate.
The subject of the painting - The Judgement of Midas - was taken from the myth of
Apollo and Marsyas, which Ovid relates in his Metamorphoses (6.383), and which is also
told by Hyginus in his Fabulae (165). It depicts the scene of the duel, or contest, in which the
satyr Marsyas (or in another version of the myth - the god Pan) dared to challenge Apollo
himself. Marsyas, an expert player on the aulos (he learned to play so skilfully on the instru-
ment that was thrown away by Athena), played first, his instrument imitating the warbling of
the nightingale, the murmuring of steams, the echo of the woods, the soughing of the wind
before a storm; thus creating a hymn in praise of nature. Apollo then took up his instrument,
plucking the string of his lyre and singing. His music was a reflection of human feelings - of
elation, joy, longing, desire and sadness. Traditionally, the contest is interpreted as being a
symbolic opposition between nature and culture, wildness and harmony, simple imitation
of nature and the skill required to construct a work of art, as well as the opposition between
wind instruments and stringed instruments and between the Attic and Asiatic styles of
poetry and music.

1 Information obtained from Mrs Barbara Czajkowska - curator at the Art Department of The Lublin
Province Museum.
2 Caravaggio: “Złożenie do Grobu.” Arcydzieło Pinakoteki Watykańskiej. Różne oblicza caravaggionizmu:
Wybrane obrazy z Pinakoteki Watykańskiej i zbiorów polskich, Antoni Ziemba, ed., exh. cat., The National Museum in
Warsaw, 14 September - 15 October 1996 (Warsaw: Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie, 1996), pp. 106-11, cat. no. 6
(Maciej Monkiewicz).