Man with a Candle

Heimbach Wolfgang

(Ovelgonne 1613-15 - after 1678)

This work was purchased by Marcantonio IV Borghese in 1783 through the architect Antonio Asprucci. The payment receipt indicated that the prince bought it together with another work (inv. no. 257) by the same artist; the two paintings are of the same dimensions and are set in an interior illuminated by candlelight, a typical motif of the genre production of Wolfgang Heimbach. Formerly ascribed to Gerrit van Honthorst, it was Roberto Longhi who confirmed the attribution to the German painter.

Object details

Commentary

Through the intermediation of the architect Antonio Asprucci, Prince Marcantonio IV Borghese paid 70 scudi to Girolamo Rovinelli for ‘two small Flemish paintings, one depicting a solicitor’s studio and the other a man who holds a lighted candle in his hand as he prepares to go to bed, both candlelit nocturnal scenes’ (quoted in Della Pergola 1959a, p. 269).

The Man with a Candle corresponds to the latter work mentioned in the payment receipt, while the former – of the same dimensions – refers to the canvas Two Men in the Studio, which likewise forms part of the Borghese Collection (inv. no. 257). Probably conceived as pendants, the two paintings were ascribed to the German artist Wolfgang Heimbach by early 20th-century critics. Indeed scholars had previously made the erroneous attribution to Gerrit van Honthorst, based on the indication in the 1833 Inventario Fidecommissario. The entries of this inventory referring to the two works in fact described a ‘portrait – an imitation – by Gerardo, 1 span 7 inches wide, 2 spans high’ and a ‘small painting – an imitation – by Gerardo, 1 span 7 inches wide, 2 spans high’. Although the first item cites a ‘portrait’, which does not well describe the scene of the canvas in question, the consecutive placement of the two entries and the correspondence of the dimensions make it clear that they refer to the two small paintings under examination.

The attribution to Gerrit van Honthorst was accepted by both Adolfo Venturi (1893, p. 137) and Giulio Cantalamessa (1912, p. 251). Later, however, Roberto Longhi (1928, p. 200) – on the basis of an oral conversation with Stechow – ascribed the pair of works to Heimbach. In particular, he noted the artist’s monogram ‘W.H.B.C.H.’ on the canvas of Two Men in the Studio as well as stylistic similarities between the two paintings. The attribution to the German painter was confirmed by subsequent critics (De Rinaldis 1939, p. 42; Della Pergola 1959b, p. 164; Martin-Méry 1959, p. 41; Morsbach 1999, p. 127; Stefani 2000, p. 359; Herrmann Fiore 2006, p. 84).

The two paintings were probably executed around 1645 in Rome, where Heimbach arrived following a period of training in the Low Countries. Later, in the early 1650s, he travelled to Denmark, where he was appointed court painter; in the course of the following decade he returned home, where he remained until his death.

The two Borghese canvases attest to the prevalent character of Heimbach’s production: as the artist was deaf and dumb, genre painting was his preferred field, together with portraiture. On several occasions he experimented with candlelit settings, as did Van Honthorst, who was a specialist in this genre and in fact earned the nickname ‘Gherardo delle Notti’ (‘Gerard of the Nights’). It is this circumstance which explains the attribution of the two paintings to him in the 19th-century inventory cited above.

The Man with a Candle shows a figure in the foreground standing in the centre of the scene as he moves toward the observer holding a candle in his left hand; with the other he protects the flame lest it should go out. Slightly behind him to his left we note a four-poster bed. In the background on the other side a second room is depicted in which two men are gathered around a lighted fireplace. One of them is seated as he smokes a long pipe, while the other is visible thanks only to his silhouette produced by the flames; this indeed creates an effect similar to that generated by the hand of the man in the foreground which shields the candle.

The painting has been compared to the Young Woman with a Candle in the Galleria Doria Pamphilj, formerly attributed to Gerard Dou, given the similar subjects and compositional approaches of the two works (Della Pergola 1959b, p. 164; on the latter painting, see Morsbach 1999, p. 128, n. AI 11).

Pier Ludovico Puddu