The Feast of Absalom

(Mattias Stomer)

That the painter Matthias Stom, also known as Stomer, was born in Amersfoort near Utrecht was first remarked upon in 1942 by the director of the Dutch Historical Institute in Rome, G.J. Hoogewerff (himself from Amersfoort), who apparently based himself on a document he was, according to H. Pauwels, unable to retrieve subsequently. Still, there is some plausibility in this. In a document of 1630, ‘Mattheo Sthom, fiamengo pittore, d’anni 30’ is recorded as residing in a house on the Strada dell’Olmo, in the Roman parish of Santa Nicola in Arcione. Some five years earlier, the Amersfoort artist Paulus Bor (c. 1601-1669) had lived in the same house, suggesting a possible connection between the fellow townsmen. Although nothing is known about Stom’s Dutch period, it becomes clear from his early paintings that he had intimate knowledge of the work of the Utrecht Caravaggisti, most notably Gerrit van Honthorst (1592-1656) and Dirck van Baburen (1595-1624), who returned to Utrecht from their Roman sojourn in 1620 and 1621 respectively, and might have encouraged Stom to go to Italy too. Unlike most Northern masters however, Stom did not return to his homeland again. His presence is detectable in Rome until 1632, after which he seems to have moved to Naples in or after 1633. From 1641 onwards, Stom was to be found in Sicily. A Saint Isidore Agicola from that year – his only dated painting – is still in situ in the Augustinian church of Caccamo. From 1646 to 1649, the artist received three documented commissions from Antonio Ruffo, Duke of Messina, who subsequently was to commission works by Rembrandt (1606-1669). In 1652 we hear the last of Stom, when he is paid for an Assumption of the Virgin with Three Saints, commissioned by the church of Santa Maria Assunta in Chiuduno, near Bergamo. It remains unclear if this means that the artist spent his last years in Northern Italy.

Stom mainly painted large canvases with Caravaggesque scenes from the Bible and ancient history. The present work (fig. 1) depicts the violent climax of the Old Testament story of two sons of King David, Absalom and his older half-brother, Amnon (2 Samuel 13: 28-29). Absalom developed a profound hatred towards his brother, after the latter had simulated illness in order to lure Absalom’s sister Tamar into his bedroom, and subsequently rape her. Two years after the incident, Absalom invited all of David’s sons for a feast. Beforehand he instructed his servants to murder Amnon upon his sign, after the wine had gotten to him. Stom has depicted the story in a monumental pictorial arrangement, strongly enhanced by the marvellous colouring. On the left the standing Absalom gives his servants the sign to stab his brother, who, in fright, looks up to his assassins, as he vainly attempts to ward them off. While the food and the wine are still on the table, the servants act upon their master’s word with horrendous vigour.

Stom endows The Feast of Absalom with an impressive, all encompassing dramatic quality, yet its composition is largely dependent on another artist’s rendering of the same subject. In 1628, the Bolognese patron Lorenzo Fioravanti commissioned a Feast of Absalom from the painter Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, better known as Guercino (1591-1666). Guercino’s painting, still described in a manuscript dating from the 1770s as being in the Casa Fioravanti in Strada Maggiore, Bologna, seems to be untraceable today. However, at least five preserved copies testify to its popularity, one of which is now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna (fig. 2). In addition, numerous of Guercino’s sketches for the commission survive, and are now in important collections all over the world. In one form or another, Stom must have seen Guercino’s composition, possibly in Bologna while travelling south to Rome. His Feast of Absalom thus presents for that reason alone an interesting case, since it throws new light on the artist’s sources of inspiration, and points to the extent to which he relied on other artists’ work, even if he may only have seen it years before.

Benedict Nicolson, in his article ‘Stomer Brought Up-to-date’ of 1977, attempted to construct a chronology of Stom’s oeuvre within the four geographical ‘periods’ of his career: Utrecht (c. 1625-1629), Rome (c. 1630-1632), Naples (1633-1639) and Sicily (c. 1640-1650). With Nicolson in mind, it has recently been argued, mainly on a stylistic basis, that the work discussed here belongs to Stom’s Sicilian period, after 1640. A few observations can be made in this respect. Indeed, Nicolson lists among the characteristics of the Sicilian period that ‘Gesture is frozen and stylised in mid-air’. This is obviously true of the present work. Yet one ought to keep in mind that its composition does not stem from Stom’s own artistic imagination at the time. On the contrary, it fully cites the Guercino work from 1628. The most profound change between the two works is in the gesture of Stom’s Amnon. The positioning and gesture of Amnon is echoed by that of Stom’s Saint Gregory in Basel (fig. 3), which Nicolson firmly places in the Naples period, while the model for Amnon seems, certainly in type, close to a St. Sebastian in Munich, also datable to Naples. Furthermore, the present work seems to hold strong affinities with a David with the Head of Goliath (fig. 4), also dated by Nicolson to the Naples period, both in the chosen subject matter (a gruesome event involving a sword), the smooth rendering of the figure of David, and especially the clouded sky in the background.

Probably the most important characteristic of the Sicilian period is the rendering of the faces and hands, which, according to Nicolson, are ‘treated as though they were baked clay with ridges and furrows, sometimes pitted, sometimes faceted.’ This hardly seems to be the case in the present work, certainly not in the polished faces of the protagonists, Amnon and Absalom. Again, a model from another work strongly comes to mind. Absalom’s features (fig. 5) are so closely identical to those of the angel in The Angel Joining the Flight Into Egypt in the Longhi Collection, Florence (fig. 6), that in all probability the artist used the same model, who appears to be somewhat younger in the latter work. Nicolson lists the Longhi painting ‘for the sake of convenience’ in Stom’s Roman period, along with some other works of a distinct character. ‘I assume they are painted earlier’, Nicolson continues, ‘although there is no external evidence to link them with Rome. This group differs from the Stomers I have discussed in that the draperies tend to be crinkly rather than tubular, the colouring is light – clear hues of blue, red, pink and yellow – locks of hair are wavy like tinfoil for the young men, boys and angels, flesh surfaces smooth rather than pitted.’ This description seems entirely applicable to the present work too. Yet, as Nicolson himself indicates, there really is no factual reason for dating the Longhi work to the Roman period. Instead, as the model was not presumably travelling along with the artist, one might rightfully place it in the early Naples years, in full accordance with the argued dating of the present work.

Finally, the provisionally suggested Neapolitan dating for the work discussed here can be corroborated by the existence of a hitherto unnoticed work in Stom literature by his hand, in the collection of the Museo Civico Gaetano Filangieri, Naples (fig. 7). This work, listed in the museum’s 1961 catalogue simply as The Fight (La Rissa), but actually depicting The Feast of Absalom, clearly derives in essence from Stom’s present composition. It is, though, farther removed from the Guercino original, and would therefore in all probability have been painted at a later stage. But again, the absence of the aforementioned, characteristic ‘baked clay’ Sicilian faces points to a pre-Sicilian, thus Neapolitan origin. It seems that these two paintings by Stom might well have inspired some painters working in Naples, for, given the theme’s relatively obscure status, its popularity in that city is striking in the years after Stom’s departure. A Feast of Absalom by Bernardo Cavallino (1616-1656), datable to the first half of the 1640s and with a Neapolitan provenance dating back to the beginning of the eighteenth century, seems to further elaborate on the present composition (fig. 8). And could not Stom’s Gaetano Filangieri work have been the source for one of Mattia Preti’s (1613-1699) versions of the theme, now in Ottawa (fig. 9)? The Ottawa work was presumably executed in Malta in around 1665, post-dating the painter’s departure from Naples. In any case, Preti is never documented as having visited Sicily, thus excluding the option that he saw Stom’s work on that island.

Jasper Hillegers

France, private collection.