Matthias Stomer

Possibly Don Giuseppe Branciforte, Principe di Butera, Mazzarino, Sicily;

Anonymous sale ('The Property of a European Collector'), London, Sotheby’s, 11 December 1991, lot 68;

Where acquired by the present collector.

R. Verdi, 'Nicolson's Stom brought up-to-date', in R. Verdi, Matthias Stom. Isaac blessing Jacob, Birmingham 1999, p. 65.

The following condition report is provided by Henry Gentle who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's: Matthias Stomer The Judgement of Solomon The original canvas has been lined. The paint layer is generally secure but there is some instability and raised paint to the lower section. A central horizontal fracture through the middle of the painting, possibly an old stretcher mark, has associated and restored minor loss. Discoloured restoration to mask minor paint loss can be detected to the background upper right, including the soldiers helmet, to the elbow of the standing female with her back to the viewer, through the brown drapery of the throne , left, and in the sky. A further minor scattering of restoration can be detected across the surface under u-v lighting. Very slight abrasion to the paint layer in some areas, revealing canvas texture, can be seen in the paint to the curve of the archway and in the blue drapery of the mother holding the child. The texture of the paint including the crispness of the brushstrokes is well preserved and the vibrancy and depth of the palette is unequivocal. Removing the discoloured and degraded varnish will improve tonality. Overall, the painting is in a good preserved state.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Stomer was, as Leonard Slatkes put it, ‘the quintessential international Caravaggesque’, for he fused influences from Rome, Naples, Flanders and the Netherlands into a striking blend of brushwork, colour, contrast and drama. He mastered the theatricality of the Caravaggesque idiom, all the more suprising for his non-Italian roots (he was a Fleming, born in Amersfoort);  he was the embodiment of the international Caravaggesque movement and proof of its domination of European Art in the first four decades of the seventeenth century.

Stomer probably painted this imposing canvas in Sicily, where he settled in circa 1640. The majority of his known œuvre was produced there and many works can still be found on the island in Palermo, Messina and Caccamo where the Chiesa di Sant’Agostino still houses his only signed and dated (1641) work, Isidore the Labourer.¹ Indeed the present painting may be identifiable with the Judgement of Solomon by Stomer recorded in the 1675 inventory of the collection of Don Giuseppe Branciforte, Principe di Butera in Mazzarino in the south of the island. It is listed there with four further works by Stomer. Until the reappearance of this painting in 1991 (see Provenance) the Branciforte picture had for a long time been assumed to be another canvas of the same subject in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. That painting, smaller in scale, serves as the pendant to a depiction of Mucius Scaevola now in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. The Houston version has more in common stylistically with Stomer’s Neapolitan output from the 1630s while the present version, as commented on by Slatkes in 1991, compares well with other works from the Sicilian period: for example, the large Stoning of Saint Stephen in Palazzo Alliata Villafranca, Palermo, betrays a very similar palette, treatment of drapery and characterisation of the participants.² This fact would argue in favour of the Branciforte painting in fact being identifiable with the present version rather than that in Houston.

The subject of the Judgement of Solomon lends itself well to Stomer’s predilection for drama and the depiction of human expression. 1 Kings 3: 16–28 recounts how two women, living in the same house and each the mother of an infant son, came to Solomon. One of the infants had died and both mothers were claiming the surviving boy to be theirs. Solomon ordered a sword to be brought, and proclaimed that the child be divided in two, as the only fair way of settling the argument. One of the mother’s agreed, while the other screamed and begged Solomon to give the boy to the other woman, just not to kill him. In this way Solomon discovered the identity of the boy’s real mother: she who was so desperate for him to live that she would forsake him to the other woman in order that he would not be killed.

1. See B. Nicolson, Caravaggism in Europe, vol. I, Turin 1990, p. 184; vol. III, Turin 1989, reproduced fig. 1542.

2. Nicolson 1989, fig. 1549.