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拍品专文
Matthias Stomer is widely regarded as one of the last great exponents of Caravaggism in Italy, and this imposing half-length of a young cavalier absorbed in the act of lighting his pipe epitomizes the qualities that make his work so compelling. Set close to the picture plane in a dark interior, the figure leans toward an oil lamp placed just beyond the edge of the composition, bringing the bowl of his pipe into the flame. The concentrated pool of light isolates his head and hands against the enveloping shadow, animating the planes of the face and the metallic highlights of his accoutrements while allowing the rest of the canvas to dissolve into darkness. The scale and the painterly assurance with which light and smoke are handled give the picture a commanding, almost theatrical presence.
Stomer, who was known by the surname Stom in his lifetime, may have been of Flemish origin. As Marten Jan Bok has pointed out, many individuals of this surname in the Dutch Republic had emigrated from Flanders, particularly Brussels and Ostend (see M.J. Bok, ‘Matthias Stom’, Nieuw licht op de Gouden Eeuw: Hendrick ter Brugghen en tijdgenoten, Utrecht, 1986-7, p. 333, notes 16 and 17). Whether a Flemish immigrant himself or the descendant of those who were, the artist probably received his training in Utrecht, possibly under the leading Caravaggesque painter Hendrick ter Brugghen, or in nearby Amersfoort. The influence of artists working in these centers is still legible in the present canvas: the subject of a fashionable young smoker in half-length, the close-up format, and the emphatic chiaroscuro all recall the Utrecht taste for tronies and genre scenes by candlelight. Nicolson's classic monograph on ter Brugghen drew attention to the proliferation of pipe-smokers and drinkers in Utrecht painting of the 1620s and 1630s, a repertory that was evidently a source for Stomer's own candle- and lamplight half-figures (see B. Nicolson, 1958, op. cit., pp. 65-66).
At some point prior to 1630—the year in which he is recorded in the Stato delle Anime (annual Easter census) as living on the Strada dell’Ormo, in the parish of San Nicolà in Arcione (Rione Trevi), with the slightly younger French painter Nicolas Prévost (1604-1670)—Stomer had departed the Netherlands for Rome (see G. J. Hoogewerff, Nederlandsche kunstenaars te Rome (1600-1725): uittreksels uit de parochiale archieven, The Hague, 1942, p. 279). He was said to be thirty years old at the time of the census, making his birth year either 1599 or 1600. Records place him in Naples by 28 July 1635 (see M. Osnabrugge, ‘New Documents for Matthias Stom in Naples’, The Burlington Magazine, CLVI, no. 1331, 2014, pp. 107-8), though he may have been resident there by late 1632 or 1633. Stomer moved to Sicily in 1639, where, in 1641, he painted his only surviving signed and dated work, the Miracle of Saint Isidorus Agricola for the high altar of the church of the Agostiniani, Caccamo, Sicily (where it remains in situ). In 1642, baptismal records indicate he had relocated to Venice, where he would remain until at least 1645, after which time all documentary trace of his movements is lost.
Whereas many of Stomer’s fellow Caravaggisti in Italy gravitated toward witty or bawdy genre scenes, his production is dominated by large religious narratives and solemn devotional heads, their drama heightened by a single intense light source (see B. Nicolson, 1979, op. cit., p. 96). The young figure here may be compared with other bust-length and half-length figures by Stomer—soldiers, old women, and youths—in which the features are built up with broad, loaded strokes and the transitions from light to shadow are handled with a characteristic, slightly granular touch (see B. Nicolson,1989, op. cit., pp. 187 and244). His celebrated nocturnes such as Young Man Reading by Candlelight (Stockholm, Nationalmuseum) and An Old Woman and a Boy by Candlelight (Birmingham Museums Trust) reveal the same fascination with the behavior of light on skin, cloth, and metal in a confined, darkened space, and the same ready, unidealized observation of his sitters. The cavalier's absorbed concentration as he bends to the lamp, the flare of the flame against the clay bowl, and the barely suggested tendrils of smoke curling into the darkness all testify to Stomer's ability to invest a modest quotidian gesture with a powerful, almost meditative intensity.
Nicolson was the first to date this picture to Stomer's years in Sicily, grouping it with works whose stylized physiognomies and strongly modeled surfaces he described as a ‘baked clay’ technique (see B. Nicolson, 1977, op. cit., p. 233). In that article he singled out three late Sicilian works—Man Blowing on a Firebrand (Palermo, Galleria Regionale della Sicilia), Tobias Healing His Father (Florence, Fondazione Longhi), and the present Young Man Lighting his Pipe—as exemplary of this manner. Fischbacher later incorporated the canvas into her survey of Stomer's Sicilian nocturnes, comparing it closely with the Caccamo altarpiece and dating it to the early 1640s, when the artist was responding most intensely to local devotional and Caravaggesque models (F. Fischbacher, op. cit., pp. 82 & 85-86).
For many years this painting hung in Palermo in Palazzo Galati, where it formed a pendant to Adam de Coster's celebrated Young Woman Holding a Distaff before a Lit Candle (fig. 1; sold Sotheby's, New York, 25 January 2017, lot 23, for $4,850,000). The two canvases remained together from their early history in the Galati collection, passing by descent through the family and subsequently into a private collection until their sale in 1992 (see Provenance). The appearance at auction of direct copies after this pair, which also came from a private Sicilian collection, provides further evidence for their shared Sicilian provenance and connection as former pendants (Wannenes, Genoa, 30 November 2016, lot 656).
Stomer, who was known by the surname Stom in his lifetime, may have been of Flemish origin. As Marten Jan Bok has pointed out, many individuals of this surname in the Dutch Republic had emigrated from Flanders, particularly Brussels and Ostend (see M.J. Bok, ‘Matthias Stom’, Nieuw licht op de Gouden Eeuw: Hendrick ter Brugghen en tijdgenoten, Utrecht, 1986-7, p. 333, notes 16 and 17). Whether a Flemish immigrant himself or the descendant of those who were, the artist probably received his training in Utrecht, possibly under the leading Caravaggesque painter Hendrick ter Brugghen, or in nearby Amersfoort. The influence of artists working in these centers is still legible in the present canvas: the subject of a fashionable young smoker in half-length, the close-up format, and the emphatic chiaroscuro all recall the Utrecht taste for tronies and genre scenes by candlelight. Nicolson's classic monograph on ter Brugghen drew attention to the proliferation of pipe-smokers and drinkers in Utrecht painting of the 1620s and 1630s, a repertory that was evidently a source for Stomer's own candle- and lamplight half-figures (see B. Nicolson, 1958, op. cit., pp. 65-66).
At some point prior to 1630—the year in which he is recorded in the Stato delle Anime (annual Easter census) as living on the Strada dell’Ormo, in the parish of San Nicolà in Arcione (Rione Trevi), with the slightly younger French painter Nicolas Prévost (1604-1670)—Stomer had departed the Netherlands for Rome (see G. J. Hoogewerff, Nederlandsche kunstenaars te Rome (1600-1725): uittreksels uit de parochiale archieven, The Hague, 1942, p. 279). He was said to be thirty years old at the time of the census, making his birth year either 1599 or 1600. Records place him in Naples by 28 July 1635 (see M. Osnabrugge, ‘New Documents for Matthias Stom in Naples’, The Burlington Magazine, CLVI, no. 1331, 2014, pp. 107-8), though he may have been resident there by late 1632 or 1633. Stomer moved to Sicily in 1639, where, in 1641, he painted his only surviving signed and dated work, the Miracle of Saint Isidorus Agricola for the high altar of the church of the Agostiniani, Caccamo, Sicily (where it remains in situ). In 1642, baptismal records indicate he had relocated to Venice, where he would remain until at least 1645, after which time all documentary trace of his movements is lost.
Whereas many of Stomer’s fellow Caravaggisti in Italy gravitated toward witty or bawdy genre scenes, his production is dominated by large religious narratives and solemn devotional heads, their drama heightened by a single intense light source (see B. Nicolson, 1979, op. cit., p. 96). The young figure here may be compared with other bust-length and half-length figures by Stomer—soldiers, old women, and youths—in which the features are built up with broad, loaded strokes and the transitions from light to shadow are handled with a characteristic, slightly granular touch (see B. Nicolson,1989, op. cit., pp. 187 and244). His celebrated nocturnes such as Young Man Reading by Candlelight (Stockholm, Nationalmuseum) and An Old Woman and a Boy by Candlelight (Birmingham Museums Trust) reveal the same fascination with the behavior of light on skin, cloth, and metal in a confined, darkened space, and the same ready, unidealized observation of his sitters. The cavalier's absorbed concentration as he bends to the lamp, the flare of the flame against the clay bowl, and the barely suggested tendrils of smoke curling into the darkness all testify to Stomer's ability to invest a modest quotidian gesture with a powerful, almost meditative intensity.
Nicolson was the first to date this picture to Stomer's years in Sicily, grouping it with works whose stylized physiognomies and strongly modeled surfaces he described as a ‘baked clay’ technique (see B. Nicolson, 1977, op. cit., p. 233). In that article he singled out three late Sicilian works—Man Blowing on a Firebrand (Palermo, Galleria Regionale della Sicilia), Tobias Healing His Father (Florence, Fondazione Longhi), and the present Young Man Lighting his Pipe—as exemplary of this manner. Fischbacher later incorporated the canvas into her survey of Stomer's Sicilian nocturnes, comparing it closely with the Caccamo altarpiece and dating it to the early 1640s, when the artist was responding most intensely to local devotional and Caravaggesque models (F. Fischbacher, op. cit., pp. 82 & 85-86).
For many years this painting hung in Palermo in Palazzo Galati, where it formed a pendant to Adam de Coster's celebrated Young Woman Holding a Distaff before a Lit Candle (fig. 1; sold Sotheby's, New York, 25 January 2017, lot 23, for $4,850,000). The two canvases remained together from their early history in the Galati collection, passing by descent through the family and subsequently into a private collection until their sale in 1992 (see Provenance). The appearance at auction of direct copies after this pair, which also came from a private Sicilian collection, provides further evidence for their shared Sicilian provenance and connection as former pendants (Wannenes, Genoa, 30 November 2016, lot 656).