Share

License imageDownload image

Matthias Stom , Dutch, c.1600-after 1649

Title

The Arrest of Christ

Datec.1641

MediumOil on canvas

Dimensions

201 x 279 cm

Credit LinePresented, Sir George Donaldson, 1894

Object numberNGI.425

DescriptionAs the soldiers converge to arrest Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, St Peter raises his sword to cut off the ear of the High Priest's servant, Malchus. Judas stands beside Christ holding a bag of money. A burning taper held by a servant intensely illuminates the faces of the principal figures, each presented as an individual study. The leathery texture of skin tones is a feature of this artist. Painted some 40 years after Caravaggio's version of the same scene, Stom's canvas offers a more expansive view and omits the fleeing figure. A preparatory drawing shows that the composition was initially vertical and more compressed.

Stom is amongst the third generation of Caravaggisti. He came fron near Utrecht, where he would logically have trained. By 1630 he was in Rome and by 1641 he had moved to Sicily, where he painted a number of subjects related to this one.

(National Gallery of Ireland: Essential Guide, 2008)
ProvenancePresented, Sir George Donaldson, 1894 Exhibition HistoryCentenary Exhibition, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, October - December 1964

The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, The University of Birmingham, Birmingham, 29 October 1999 - 16 January 2000
Label TextMatthias Stom was one of many Dutch and Flemish painters who visited Italy to study the work of living and deceased artists. While working in Rome, he was greatly influenced by Caravaggio. This painting depicts the moment when Christ, having been identified by Judas’s kiss, was arrested by the soldiers of the Chief Priests and Pharisees. Stom evidently drew inspiration from Caravaggio’s Taking of Christ, which is on indefinite loan to the National Gallery of Ireland, but currently on display at the National Gallery of Scotland in the exhibition Beyond Caravaggio.