Fig. 1. Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Martyrdom of Saint Matthew, 1600. Oil on canvas, 127 by 135 in. San Luigi dei Francesci, Rome.

This impressive canvas was rediscovered as the work of Dirck van Baburen in 1996, prior to which it was mistakenly identified as Nicolas Tournier, a fellow follower of Caravaggio working in Rome. The subject of Christ driving the money changers from the temple, previously rare in European art, gained popularity after the Council of Trent as a reminder of the importance of clearing the Church of corruption. Van Baburen drew inspiration for this composition from Caravaggio’s seminal Martyrdom of Saint Matthew for San Luigi dei Francesi (fig. 1), as well as from other treatments of the present subject by his Italian and French contemporaries in Rome.1 Dating to about 1617 - 1618, this is one of a small number of Van Baburen’s Italian works remaining in private hands. Such dramatic paintings would go on to be immensely influential in the artist’s native Utrecht despite his untimely death before the age of 33.

One of the closest comparisons with Van Baburen’s canvas is a painting by Bartolomeo Manfredi now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts et d'Archéologie de Libourne, which dates from some time between 1610 and 1617.2 Manfredi’s painting was probably acquired by Cardinal Fabrizio Verospi shortly after its creation; Verospi’s palace on the Via del Corso was very close to that of Van Baburen’s Spanish patron, Petro Cussida, giving the younger artist opportunity to study Manfredi’s example before completing his in 1617 or 1618. Both artists positioned Christ at left and included the figure of the women with the basket of birds on her head (representing the people selling doves in the temple) at right, but Van Baburen added tension and drama by twisting the figure of Christ away from the viewer and adding the shocked and half-clothed man at center stretching his arm as he runs away.

Fig. 2. Valentin de Boulogne, Christ Driving the Money Changers from the Temple, c. 1618-1622. Oil on canvas, 195 × 260 cm. Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, Palazzo Barberini, Rome.

As further evidence of the close artistic exchange among followers of Caravaggio in Rome, Van Baburen’s picture, in turn, seems to have inspired Valentin de Boulogne’s version now in the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, Palazzo Barberini, which is datable to 1618 - 1622 (fig. 2). Like Van Baburen, Valentin transformed Manfredi’s composition by twisting the figure of Christ and positioning the dove-seller frontally, as if looking at the viewer in warning, and the central male figure fleeing from Christ also reaches up with an outstretched hand. Indeed Valentin's version of the subject was similar enough to Van Baburen's that Bonzi apparently attributed the present work to Valentin in the 1930s.

1. A. Lemoine in  Valentin de Boulogne: Beyond Caravaggio, exhibition catalogue, New York and Paris 2016-2017, p. 126, no. 17.

2. Oil on canvas, 162 × 244 cm. Musée des Beaux-Arts et d'Archéologie de Libourne. While Nicole Hartje dates Manfredi’s painting to 1610-1612, Rosella Vodret believes it dates slightly later, to 1616 -1617. See Hartje 2004, p. 135-137, 304-308, no. 8; R. Vodret, “Bartolomeo Manfredi (Ostiano 1582-Roma 1622),” in I Caravaggeschi; percorsi e protagonisti, A. Zuccari, ed., vol. II, Milan 2010, p. 525.