The Procuress (Dirck van Baburen)
The Procuress | |
---|---|
Artist | Dirck van Baburen |
Year | c. 1622 |
Medium | Oil on canvas |
Dimensions | 101.6 cm × 107.6 cm (40.0 in × 42.4 in) |
Location | Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston |
The Procuress is the name given to a number of similar paintings by the Dutch Golden Age painter Dirck van Baburen. The painting is in the Caravaggiesque style of the Utrecht school.
Description
The painting shows three figures: a prostitute on the left, the client in the middle and the procuress on the right pointing to her palm to indicate that she is expecting payment. The client is holding a coin between his fingers as he puts his arm around the prostitute, who is playing a lute. The painting is an example of the popular genre known as Bordeeltjes, or brothel scenes (see also the overlapping genre of Merry company scenes).[1] The cropped, close-up figures close to the picture plane against a flat blank background are typical of Utrecht Caravaggism.[2]
There are at least three versions of the painting. The versions in the
Vermeer
One of these paintings was owned by
The Courtauld Institute version
In 1960,
Following this, the BBC TV programme Fake or Fortune? conducted a further investigation.[5] The resulting film was first shown July 2011.[5] Philip Mould and Fiona Bruce traveled to Amsterdam where they obtained samples of the paints used by van Meegeren.[5] These included an artificial resin which turned out to be Bakelite.[5] The use of Bakelite had the effect of hardening the paint and thus making it difficult to detect that it was new.[5] Chemical analysis showed Bakelite in the Courtauld painting, thus confirming that it was a modern forgery.[5] Van Meegeren is the only forger known to have used this technique, so the painting was attributed to him.[5] It was probably intended to be used as a prop in Vermeer forgeries.[5] Ironically, it is now more valuable as a van Meegeren forgery than as a 17th-century studio copy.[5]
See also
- Aviva Burnstock
- The Proposition (painting)
References
- ^ Norbert Schneider, Vermeer, 1632–1675: veiled emotions, Taschen, 2000, p.24.
- ^ a b John Michael Montias, Vermeer and His Milieu: A Web of Social History, Princeton University Press, 1991, p.146.
- ^ Rijksmuseum catalogue
- ^ "MFA catalogue". Mfa.org. Retrieved 11 December 2013.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j "Van Meegeren". Fake or Fortune?. Episode 3. 3 July 2011. BBC. Retrieved 4 August 2011.
- ^ "National Gallery". National Gallery. 8 September 2013. Retrieved 11 December 2013.
- ^ Michael Wayne Cole, Mary Pardo, Inventions of the studio, Renaissance to Romanticism, UNC Press Books, 2005, p.206.
- ^ "report in the Telegraph". Telegraph.co.uk. 2 July 2011. Retrieved 11 December 2013.
- ^ Akbar, Arifa (28 September 2009). "Independent article". Independent article. Archived from the original on 18 June 2022. Retrieved 11 December 2013.
External links
- Media related to The Procuress by Dirck van Baburen at Wikimedia Commons