THE CANDLELIGHT MASTER ACTIVE IN ROME, CIRCA 1620-1640 | A physician with an urine sample by candlelight

With Galleria Vangelli, Rome, 1972; 
Private collection, France.

R. Spear, 'Unknown Pictures by the Caravaggisti (with notes on "Caravaggio and his followers")', in: Storia dell'Arte, no. 14, April-June 1972, p. 155, reproduced fig. 17;
B. Nicolson, The international Caravaggesque movement: lists of pictures by Caravaggio and his followers throughout Europe from 1590 to 1650, Oxford 1979, p. 22 (under Doctor examining a Sample of Urine, no. 2);
B. Nicolson, Caravaggism in Europe, Oxford 1989, vol. 1, p. 63, under no. 858, no. 2 (all the above as by Trophime Bigot).

The canvas has been relatively newly relined (glue). The painted surface seems to be in a good condition with some thinness throughout especially in the dark areas of the composition. Discolored retouchings can be seen in the physician’s sleeve, the upper part of his shoulder, and upper left. The painted surface is covered with a very dense craquelure pattern which is a bit coarse in places. The impastos of the areas containing lead white, like the face, hands, the glove, the flask and the paper seem to be nicely preserved. The painted surface is covered with a dirty and somewhat discolored varnish layer which is matt in places. Under the UV light The varnish layer fluoresces almost completely, showing some tiny retouchings around the edges and some surface dirt. Offered with a new plain wooden frame. Le tableau a fait l’objet d’un rentoilage relativement récent (à la colle). La couche picturale semble en bon état, avec quelques usures éparses, notamment dans les parties sombres. On observe des repeints désaccordés dans la manche du physicien, le haut de son coude, et en haut à gauche. Un important réseau de craquelures, parfois larges, recouvre la surface du tableau. Les impastos dans les blancs, notamment sur le visage, les mains, le gant, la flasque et le papier, semblent bien préservés. Le tableau se présente sous un vernis sale et jauni, parfois mat. A la lampe UV Le vernis est presque totalement opaque, laissant apparaître de légères restaurations le long des bords et quelques salissures en surface. Dans un cadre en bois récent.
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The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, holds a very closely comparative work to ours, of similar measurements and datable to circa 1630–1633 (oil on canvas, 72 x 99 cm; inv. no. WA1942.18). Nicolson considered the Oxford picture the prime version of this particular composition. The compositional elements of the two pictures are strikingly similar, observe the basket for the bottle on the left, the gloved hand and the luminous light coming from the candlelit flask. Our picture however radiates a more warm orange-hued light in its chiaroscuro.   In the 1620s and 1630s the conceit of staging a scene around a single candlelight was employed to great effect by Gerrit van Honthorst and his fellow northern Caravaggisti. One of its key exponents, and the author of this intriguing picture, was an artist whose true identity has for many years been the focus of much scholarly debate, and is still not satisfactorily resolved. In essence three names have been proposed as the artist behind this body of work: The Candlelight Master, Trophime Bigot, and a Maestro Jacomo, or Jacomo Massa. In unpicking the tangled issue of who is who, one can only start with Benedict Nicolson. It was the latter who, in 1960, first identified a cohesive group of stylistically homogeneous pictures and, for want of any documented evidence or signed works, gave the artist the evocative title 'The Candlelight Master' (B. Nicolson, '"The Candlelight Master", a follower of Honthorst in Rome', in: Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, 1960, pp. 121-164). Nicolson subsequently identified this painter with a documented artist, Trophime Bigot, a native of Arles but known to have worked in Rome between 1620 and 1634, where he was recorded as a painter of nocturnal, half-length figures. However, questions were raised over the marked stylistic differences between the works initially grouped by Nicolson, and other signed works by Bigot that were known in Provence. It was briefly suggested that the Provence pictures may instead have been painted by his father, also called Trophime Bigot, but later documentary evidence proved that there was, in fact, only one artist by that name (J. Boyer, 'One and Only Trophime Bigot', in: The Burlington Magazine, vol. CXXX, no. 1022, May 1988, pp. 355-357). Opinion remained divided on the Bigot hypothesis. Then, thanks to Olivier Michel in 1978, another name came to light in the archive of Santa Maria in Aquiro, Rome. In the church are three altarpieces, one of which Nicolson had included in his original group; the archival document revealed the artist of the pictures in the church as 'Maestro Jacomo'. This opened the question as to whether the whole corpus ought to be then be given to Maestro Jacomo, a question complicated by the fact that Nicolson himself believed different hands to be responsible for the three pictures in the church. More information on this name has been gleaned recently, with an article from 2012 suggesting the three pictures be attributed to a certain Jacomo Massa (A. Amendola, 'La cappella della Passione in Santa Maria in Aquiro: il vero nome di maestro Jacomo', in: Bollettino d'Arte, no. 16, Oct-Dec 2012, pp. 77-85). Research continues towards achieving scholarly consensus over the identity of Nicolson's 'Candlelight Master'.