WILLEM DE POORTER | THE IDOLATRY OF SOLOMON

Mr. and Mrs. Frederik Wagner-de Wit, The Hague, probably before 1940;

Transferred to the Wagner-de Wit Foundation, The Hague-Maastricht, inv.no. 334, 1954;

By whom sold, c. 2010.

Maastricht, Museum Spaans Gouvernement, now Museum aan het Vrijthof, on loan 1973 - 2010.

This scene was recently identified as one of De Poorter's six known versions of the Idolatry of Solomon. The green curtain refers to the curtain King Solomon installed in his temple to separate the Ark of the Covenant. The Old Testament subject of Solomon committing idolatry to please his many wives was popular in De Poorter's native Haarlem and throughout the officially Protestant Dutch Republic, where it was seen as a critique of the Catholic Church and its use of religious imagery. The present painting can be dated to the 1640s due to the combination of refined detail and sketchy background figures.