TERBRUGGHEN, Hendrick

Dutch painter, one of the earliest and finest exponents of Caravaggism in northern Europe. Born into a Catholic family, he grew up in Utrecht, studied there with Bloemaert, then spent about a decade in Rome (c. 1604-1614). On his return to the Netherlands he became with Honthorst the leader of Caravaggism associated with the Utrecht schoolGLOSSARYPrincipally a group of three Dutch painters - Dirck van Baburen (c. 1590-1624), Gerrit van Honthorst (1590-1656), and Hendrik Terbrugghen (1588-1629) - who went to Rome and fell fully under the pervasive influence of Caravaggio's art before returning to Utrecht. Although none of them ever actually met Caravaggio (d. 1610), each had access to his paintings, knew his former patrons, and was influenced by the work of his follower Bartholomeo Manfredi (1580-1620/21), especially his half-length figural groups, which were boldly derived from Caravaggio and occasionally passed off as the deceased master's works. Back in the Netherlands the "Caravaggisti" were eager to demonstrate what they had learned. Their subjects are frequently religious ones, but brothel scenes and pictures in sets, such as five works devoted to the senses, were popular with them also. The numerous candles, lanterns, and other sources of artificial light are characteristic and further underscore the indebtedness to Caravaggio. Although Honthorst enjoyed the widest reputation at the time, painting at both the Dutch and English courts, Terbrugghen is generally regarded as the most talented and versatile of the group.. A second journey to Italy (c. 1620) has been postulated, as his later works are generally more thoroughly Caravaggesque than his earlier ones.

Terbrugghen was chiefly a religious painter, but he also produced some remarkable genreGLOSSARYIn a broad sense, the term is used to mean a particular branch or category of art; landscape and portraiture, for example, are genres of painting, and the essay and the short story are genres of literature. works, notably a pair of Flute Players (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Kassel, 1621), which in their subtle tonality - with dark figures placed against a light background - anticipated by a generation the achievement of painters of the Delft school such as Fabritius and Vermeer.

Although he was praised by Rubens, who visited Utrecht in 1627, Terbrugghen was neglected by 18th- and 19th-century collectors and historians. The rediscovery of his sensitive and poetic paintings has been part of the reappraisal of Caravaggesque art during the 20th century.