Christ Driving the Money Changers from the Temple

Caravaggio never painted Christ driving the traders from the Temple, yet his pictures run all through this one. The open-mouthed boy fleeing at the far right comes from the screaming child in his Martyrdom of Saint Matthew, in San Luigi dei Francesi, the French church in Rome, and the man thrown on his back at the left recalls Saul fallen from his horse in the Conversion of Saint Paul at Santa Maria del Popolo. Valentin painted this canvas between about 1618 and 1622, early in his Roman years, and at more than two and a half metres wide it is among the most ambitious things he attempted then.

Other painters in Caravaggio's wake had already taken on the subject, Cecco del Caravaggio around 1610 and Bartolomeo Manfredi a few years later. Valentin packs the action into the foreground. Christ stands in a great triangle of shadow, his face showing neither anger nor violence, while the traders tumble away from him and one merchant, his arm raised, braces for the blow. Valentin came back to the subject later, and that second version, dated 1627 or 1628, is in the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg.