Gerard van Honthorst

The Honthorst retrospective organised by the Centraal Museum is remarkable, all the more so because the painter himself was undoubtedly one of the greatest artists of the seventeenth century. The selected works, several of them large-scale, provide a comprehensive view of his production, which began with Caravaggism but subsequently diversified, both stylistically and in terms of subject matter. We therefore cannot recommend the exhibition too highly to art lovers.
The book accompanying the event is equally fascinating, and everyone should have it in their library. The artist’s life and work are analysed in a highly comprehensive and perceptive manner, across several chapters arranged chronologically. But it is a biography rather than an exhibition catalogue: the illustrated list of exhibited works, without any critical apparatus, is not enough to alter that conclusion.

This absence of a genuine catalogue is the only reservation we would express about the undertaking. While the book allows one to follow Honthorst throughout his life, as well as the evolution of his art, the exhibition itself is organised somewhat differently, combining — as is often the case — chronology and thematic sections, in a display that is moreover highly successful (ill. 1 and 2), and which allows the visitor to understand the artist in all his complexity.
For he was not merely a Caravaggesque painter, as he is so often described. From the outset, in the various cities where he worked, from Utrecht, his native city, to Rome, from London to The Hague, he demonstrated an extraordinarily varied inspiration.
A pupil of Abraham Bloemaert in Utrecht, he was undeniably influenced by him, though through his most…