Solomon's Judgement

For decades this canvas had a painter without a name. The art historian Roberto Longhi called him the Master of the Judgement of Solomon, after this very picture, and guessed he was a Frenchman working in Rome among Caravaggio's followers in the 1610s. In 2002 the scholar Gianni Papi proposed a different answer, the young Jusepe de Ribera, just arrived in Rome around 1609 or 1610. Several specialists have followed him and the museum catalogues it as Ribera, though others still argue for the Roman painter Angelo Caroselli. The story comes from the Book of Kings, where Solomon settles a quarrel between two mothers by ordering a baby cut in two. There are two infants here. The dead one lies on the floor beside the kneeling woman, and the living one hangs by a leg from the executioner's hand.