David de Haen

C. Grilli, "Il committente della cappella della Pietà in San Pietro in Montorio in Roma," in Bolletino d’arte, 1994, p.163, no. 84-85;
C  Grilli, “David De Haen pittore olandese a Roma," in Paragone, vol. XLVIII, 563, (99), January 1997, p. 50;
C. Grilli “Il collezionismo di Pietro Cussida a Roma e una seconda cappella in San Pietro in Montorio," in Caravaggio e l’Europa, exhibition catalogue, Milan 2005, p.62.

This expressive Satyr drinking from grapes is a superlative example of the rare work of David de Haen, one of the central figures in Rome in the decade immediately following the death of Caravaggio, and an important link between Italy and the North through his interpretation of Caravaggism. 

David de Haen’s career coincided with one of the most artistically diverse and dynamic moments in his adopted city of Rome. He was a key figure in the community of Northern artists who settled there in the first two decades of the 17th century, and was a close associate of Dirck van Baburen, one of the leading practitioners of the rapidly developing Caravagesque style in Rome. Baburen and de Haen were living together from 1619-20 in the parish of San Andrea delle Frate, a hotbed of artistic creativity where numerous foreign artists such as Douffet and Valentin had also settled. Their absorption of Caravaggio's style would inform their own work for the remainder of their careers. This was no doubt due in large part to their close proximity to Bartolomeo Manfredi, who also lived in the San Andrea delle Frate at the same moment. De Haen and Baburen’s most important collaboration, and certainly one of the great works in Rome executed by Northern artists was their series of pictures executed for the Pietà Chapel in San Pietro in Montorio, which they completed between 1615 and 1620. Following Baburen’s departure for Utrecht, de Haen took up residence in Palazzo Giustiniani, where he was patronized by Vincenzo Giustinani. For that great Roman patron, de Haen executed his only fully documented independent work, an Entombment (destroyed in Berlin in 1945) which is recorded in Giustiniani’s collection as by a “David Aam”.¹

As understanding of de Haen's distinct style has grown, so too have the number of works which are now accepted within his corpus. This picture, depicting a Satyr squeezing juice from a bunch of grapes, can be added to the limited, but concrete group of pictures recently given to de Haen in full.² It contains all of the hallmarks of a mature Northern artist with a keen understanding of Caravagesque tenebrism and compositional intensity. The picture may correspond with that listed in the inventory of Pietro Cussida, a Spanish diplomat who served under Philip III and Philip IV. Cussida was an avid collector of the Caravaggisti, as well as the patron who ultimately secured the San Pietro Montorio commission for de Haen and Baburen. His inventory references “Cinque quadri delli cinque sentimenti “(Five paintings with the five senses) and this painting might be identifiable as the sense of taste, suggesting that it is part of a larger unidentified series. Cecilia Grilli dates this picture to circa 1619, based on stylistic comparison between this Satyr and both the figure of Marsyas in de Haen's drawing representing Apollo Flying Marsyas (Uffizi, Florence), as well as the kneeling soldier in the lunette in San Pietro in Montorio.

We are grateful to Cecilia Grilli for endorsing the attribution to de Haen, and for her assistance in the cataloguing of this lot. Grilli plans to publish this work in her forthcoming monograph on David de Haen.

1. L.J. Slatkes, Dirck van Baburen (circa 1595-1624)-A DutchPainter in Utrecht and Rome, Utrecht 1965, fig.4.
2. See for example, his signed Portrait of a Man, sold London, Christie’s, 18 April 1991, lot 56, and a Self Portrait in the Luigi Koelliker collection.