The Betrayal of Christ

When this was painted, sometime between 1616 and 1619, Caravaggio had been dead for several years, yet his arrest of Christ, made in 1602 for the Roman nobleman Ciriaco Mattei, was still with the Mattei family in Rome. Young painters from the north were studying his manner, and Dirck van Baburen, from Utrecht, was one of them. He takes the same moment. Soldiers in gleaming armour close in, a bare-chested man grabs at the prisoner, and a bearded figure presses in behind with a hand on his chest. Jesus keeps his hands folded low and lifts his eyes. The Borghese sees the debt to Caravaggio but finds the arrangement calmer. The scholar Roberto Longhi first gave it to Baburen, in 1926. The Borghese family had acquired the canvas in 1787 from the sculptor Bartolomeo Cavaceppi, in return for a monthly annuity.