Outstanding discovery in Genoa, Caravaggio work found: it is an Adoration by Matthias Stomer

An important discovery in Genoa , where a Caravaggesque canvas, attributed to Matthias St omer, also known as Matthias Stom (Amersfoort, c. 1600 - Sicily, after 1650), a great Dutch painter, who was influenced by Caravaggio’s followers from his countrymen (in particular the Caravaggesque painters from Utrecht), and later moved to Italy, where he was active mainly between Naples and Sicily, places where some of his major masterpieces are preserved. The work is anAdoration of the Shepherds , and the discovery is due to art historian Giacomo Montanari , who noticed the presence of the work during a visit he made to the headquarters of the archives of the Province of Capuchin Friars Minor in Genoa.

The discovery dates back to last August, but news of it was not released until yesterday afternoon because the last few months have been spent on comparisons among scholars and the search for any documents that could provide additional information on this’work, which is rather battered, with conspicuous abrasions of the paint film and falls of color, which, however, do not prevent one from appreciating the painting’s exceptional quality, so much so that it is immediately recognizable as the work of Stomer’s hand: in fact, the Genoese canvas can be juxtaposed with well-known works by the Dutch artist, such as theAdoration in the Capodimonte Museum in Naples, the one in Palazzo Madama in Turin, and especially theAdoration of the Shepherds in Monreale, which seems to be the one with the greatest affinity to thework discovered in Genoa (the figure of the Madonna, in particular, is almost totally superimposable, and strong similarities are also found in the figure of St. Joseph, not to mention stylistic elements, such as the way of illuminating the figures, the chiaroscuro contrasts and the way of conducting the drapery that refer without too many doubts to the art of Stomer). Precisely because of its affinities with works from the 1740s, it is already possible to lean towards dating it and think that it may have been made in those years.

Montanari let it be known that he has found not only consensus among scholars, but also some documents that could shed light on the painting. It may in fact be a canvas made for the Sicilian nobleman Giuseppe Branciforte, count of Mazzarino and prince of Butera, who was known in the chronicles of the time to have been a keen collector, and who counted several works by Stomer in his collection. The Mazzarino-Butera collection was later dispersed during the eighteenth century, and we are not sure whether the work discovered in Genoa belonged to him, but in some inventories in Sicily and Naples traces of a work by Stomer with the same subject and almost identical dimensions to those of the Genoese canvas have been found, a circumstance that may help to comfort the idea of autography. In particular, the work mentioned in the inventories, which, said explicitly, is thought to be the Genoese one, is documented in Naples until 1801, after which traces of it are lost.

“It’s one of those chance finds in an archive,” Giacomo Montanari told the microphones of TG Rai Liguria. “I was there looking for other things, and then this painting in a corridor that was a little bit in the shadows gave a great light, and the name of Matthias Stom immediately came to mind, and we obviously tried to find a context for it, to understand how this painting had arrived in Genoa. This is a Sicilian work by Stom, from the time when he painted the most important things in his career, and a time when he had a great collecting contact with Genoa. None of those works are left in Genoa today, and paradoxically this canvas, made for Sicily and transited to Naples, reconnects this much-loved artist here with a collecting past that we have largely lost.”

As of today, the painting is on display at the Diocesan Museum in Genoa, in the heart of the historic center of the Ligurian capital. The work, as can also be seen in person, is in need of restoration that can redeem it from its poor condition: the idea of the museum’s management is to launch a fundraiser to raise the necessary amount of money to allow the intervention in order to return the work to full legibility and present it again, but more “fit”, for Christmas next year. In addition, the next step will be scientific studies that will be able to reconstruct as much as possible the history of a painting that, however, even only from the first information shared and made public, can already be considered as one of the major discoveries of the year, and not only in Italy.

Outstanding discovery in Genoa, Caravaggio work found: it is an Adoration by Matthias Stomer

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