Man with a Candle

In 1783 Prince Marcantonio IV Borghese was remaking the rooms of his villa on the Pincian hill, and he bought this small canvas through his architect, Antonio Asprucci. It came from a collector named Girolamo Rovinelli, together with a companion of exactly the same size, Two Men in a Study. Wolfgang Heimbach, a German who worked for years in Italy, had painted them as a pair around 1645. Here the candle is the only light. It strikes the young man's face from below, catches his white collar and glows red through the hand he raises to keep the flame from going out. Beyond a doorway behind him a fire burns in a hearth, where a seated man draws on a long pipe. The canvas, 45 by 35 centimetres, is kept today in the museum's storerooms.