Christ among the Doctors

The first owner of this canvas was probably Juan de Lezcano, secretary to the Spanish ambassador in Rome. When he made his will in 1631 he owned 12 paintings by Borgianni, two of them of this very subject, and the ambassador himself was among the painter's patrons. The story comes from Luke's Gospel. When he is 12, Jesus stays behind in the Temple in Jerusalem and astonishes the teachers with his answers. Borgianni packs the old men tight around the lit boy, suggests the Temple with a single column, and saves his most careful brushwork for the hands at the centre while the background stays loose. It was painted around 1609, when Caravaggio's way with light had taken hold in Rome, and the Rijksmuseum notes that pictures like this made a deep impression on the Dutch painters who went there. It hangs in the museum on loan from the Broere Charitable Foundation.