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Allegory of Faith
Hendrick ter Brugghen(The Hague 1588 – 1629 Utrecht)

ca. 1626
oil on canvas
72.3 x 56.3 cm
signed and dated in the light paint along the centerof the left edge: “HTBrügghen fecit 162(?)”(“HTB” in ligature)
HBr-100

How to cite
Van Tuinen, Ilona. “Allegory of Faith” (2017). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 3rd ed. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock
Jr. and Lara Yeager-Crasselt. New York, 2020–23. https://www.theleidencollection.com/archive/ (archived December2023).
A PDF of every version of this entry is available in this Online Catalogue's Archive, and the Archive is managed by apermanent URL. New versions are added only when a substantive change to the narrative occurs.

In the corner of a humble room sits a young woman who, with a smile spread acrossComparative Figures

her slightly parted lips, gazes upward, her dark eyes fixated on a higher realm.
Hendrick ter Brugghen framed the woman’s face with a high-necked vest and a creamcolored headscarf that falls in thick creases over her shoulders. A heavy blue mantle
wrapped over her arms covers a red undergarment, the left sleeve of which is justvisible. The large cross she holds on her lap, its left arm only partially seen behind herleft shoulder, indicates the spiritual essence of her rapture.[1]Unifying the composition and establishing its reflective mood is the light shining
from the simple candle the woman holds in her left hand. Ter Brugghen placed theflame at the exact center of the composition and carefully rendered its varying
colors—orange tip, white hot core, and blue base. Just as this candle burns quietly
without so much as a flicker, so also does the flame of the oil lamp hanging on thewall at the left. The lamp exudes a thin trail of smoke that rises in a perfectly straightFig 1. Hendrick Ter Brugghen,Musical Trio [The Concert], ca. 1626,
oil on canvas, 99.1 x 116.8 cm,
National Gallery, London, Bought with
contributions from the National
Heritage Memorial Fund, The Art
Fund, and the Pilgrim Trust, 1983
(NG6483), © National Gallery,
London / Art Resource, NY

line, underscoring the stillness surrounding the woman’s spiritual reverie.
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Like other Utrecht Caravaggisti, such as Dirck van Baburen (ca. 1595–1624) andGerard van Honthorst (1592–1656), Ter Brugghen was fascinated with the depictionof light effects. This work is one of two paintings in which Ter Brugghen included
two different light sources, the other being his Musical Trio of ca. 1626 in the
National Gallery, London (fig 1), where the interior space is similarly lit by a candle
and an oil lamp.[2] In that painting, Ter Brugghen skillfully rendered the light effects
created by these different light sources: the young woman’s chin and the tip of her
nose are brightly lit by the candle’s flame, whereas her right eyebrow is softly
illuminated by the faint light coming from the oil lamp.
Who is this young woman so obviously averting her eyes from the worldly realm? In
all likelihood she is not a saint, since no female saint is known to carry both a crossand a candle as attributes. It is more probable that she represents an allegoricalconcept, although scholars have struggled to articulate one that seems to accord fully
with the character of the image. Albert Blankert, who was the first to publish thispainting after it was discovered in 1991, interpreted it as an image of religious piety
and specifically as an allegory of heavenly contemplation.[3] He discussed the painting
together with another allegorical painting by Ter Brugghen, his Melancholia of ca.
1626 in the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. Melancholia shows a young woman
holding a skull and sitting in front of an hourglass with her eyes closed, her faceleaning on her right hand.[4] The presence of the skull and the hourglass, symbols ofearthly transience, prompted Blankert to interpret the Toronto painting as an allegoryof worldly contemplation. Though these works have similar dimensions and may
depict the same model, the figures are both turned to the left, making it unlikely thatthey were intended as pendants. Instead, Blankert proposed that the two works should
be seen as variations on the same theme.[5]Leonard Slatkes, on the other hand, identified the young woman as the Virgin Mary.
He argued that her headdress and mantle appear, albeit not identically, in other Ter
Brugghen depictions of the Virgin, such as the Crucifixion at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York.[6] In Netherlandish painting the Virgin is depicted
holding a candle only on her deathbed, and hence Slatkes interpreted the subject as
being the Death of the Virgin.[7] He argued that Ter Brugghen extracted Mary fromtraditional representations of this scene in which she is surrounded by the twelve
apostles.[8] In Death of the Virgin depictions, however, John the Evangelist often aids
the feeble Mary in holding her candle,[9] and although the compositions always
contain a cross, it is held by one of the apostles, never by Mary herself.[10] Since theapostles are so important to the story, and since the Virgin is never depicted holding across, Slatkes’s argument seems unlikely.
Neither of these theories takes full account of the central importance of the candle,© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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which must have had thematic as well as compositional importance. Numerous
references to candles appear in the Old and New Testament, as in the book of Psalms
18:28 (“For thou wilt light my candle, the Lord my God will enlighten my darkness”)
and in Revelation 22:5 (“And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle,
neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for
ever and ever”). In these passages the light of the candle is discussed in terms ofGod’s light, in one case equating the two, and in the other describing how the latter
renders the former entirely unnecessary. In this painting Ter Brugghen alludes to thelight of the candle in both of these ways. Here, on earth, the woman depends on the
candle to light her world, but she gazes upward in anticipation of the heavenly light
she will eventually receive. When one considers all of the pictorial elements in thiswork—the painting’s quiet and reflective mood, the cross and lit candle, the woman’s
white and blue robes, and her heavenly gaze—it seems probable that Ter Brugghen
intended the painting to depict an allegory of Faith.
Ter Brugghen prominently signed and dated the left center of the canvas:“HTBrugghen fecit 162[…].” Because of paint abrasion, only a faint vertical stroke isvisible in the last digit, and can be read either as a 1 or a 6. The thematic and stylistic
parallels of this work to the Toronto Melancholia and the London Musical Trio, bothof ca. 1626, however, strongly suggest that this painting was executed in 1626.[11] Aswith virtually all of Ter Brugghen’s works, it is not known who commissioned thiswork, although it is reasonable to assume that the artist painted it for a Catholic
patron. One possibility may be the Haarlem artist Frederick Vroom (1600–67), whose
1667 inventory records a “Tronigie van Maria by Heynde ter Burgh.”[12] Whoever was
the original owner, this compelling image of a private expression of faith surely
struck a chord with the devout believers who meditated before it.

- Ilona van Tuinen, 2017

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Endnotes
1. Albert Blankert, A Newly Discovered Painting by Hendrick ter Brugghen (Zwolle, 1991), 19 and 26,
correctly observed that there is an error in the perspective of this fragment of the left arm of the cross.
2. Albert Blankert, A Newly Discovered Painting by Hendrick ter Brugghen (Zwolle, 1991), 11, and Leonard
J. Slatkes and Wayne Franits, The Paintings of Hendrick ter Brugghen: Catalogue Raisonné (Amsterdam
and Philadelphia, 2007), 114–15, also made this observation.
3. Albert Blankert, A Newly Discovered Painting by Hendrick ter Brugghen (Zwolle, 1991), 20–23. Basedon Blankert’s allegorical interpretation, subsequent authors have referred to this painting more generally
as an allegory of faith. See Paul Huys Jannsen, Jan van Bijlert (1597/98–1671): Painter in Utrecht(Amsterdam, 1998), 123, and Mirjam Neumeister, Das Nachtstück mit Kunstlicht in der niederländischen
Malerei und Graphik des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts (Petersberg, 2003), 201.
4. The painting owes its name Melancholia to the pose of the woman, with her face in her hand. This pose
had been associated with melancholy ever since Albrecht Dürer’s

influential engraving of1514 Melancholia. Based on the woman’s young appearance and the presence of the skull, various
scholars suspect that Ter Brugghen was evoking the penitent Mary Magdalene, though the absence ofher traditional attributes prevents any definitive identification. See, for instance, Karen A. Finlay,
Terbrugghen: Melancholy (Exh. cat. Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario) (Toronto, 1984), who identifies
her as Melancholy, but acknowledges the undeniable references to Magdalene. See also Marten J. Bok,
“Was Hendrick ter Brugghen a Melancholic?” Journal of the Historians of Netherlandish Art 1, no. 2(2009): 1-8, who proposes that the image is Mary Magdalene personified as Melancholia mourning thedeath of Jesus.
5. Albert Blankert, A Newly Discovered Painting by Hendrick ter Brugghen (Zwolle, 1991), 23.
6. On the Crucifixion, see Walter Liedtke, “The Crucifixion with the Virgin and Saint John,” in Dutch
Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2 vols. (New York, 2007), 1: 109–18.
7. Leonard Slatkes, “Bringing Ter Brugghen and Baburen Up-to-Date,” Bulletin du Musée National de
Varsovie 37 (1996): 199–218, esp. 217–19. This interpretation was also published in Leonard J. Slatkes
and Wayne Franits, The Paintings of Hendrick ter Brugghen (1588–1629): Catalogue Raisonné(Amsterdam, 2007), 114–15. See also Albert Blankert, A Newly Discovered Painting by Hendrick ter
Brugghen (Zwolle, 1991), who made the same observation about the young woman’s clothes, but
refrained from identifying her as the Virgin because the Virgin is never depicted holding a cross. See
Leonard J. Slatkes and Wayne Franits, The Paintings of Hendrick ter Brugghen (1588–1629): Catalogue
Raisonné (Amsterdam and Philadelphia, 2007), 155 n. 1, where Franits tentatively proposed anotherinterpretation. The presence of the oil lamp prompted him to suggest that the woman might be one of
the Wise Virgins from the parable of the Ten Virgins (Matthew 25:1–13). In Ter Brugghen’s painting,the most essential element of this parable, the oil jar, is not depicted, making it unlikely that the artist© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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intended to depict one of the virgins from this story.
8. See Leonard Slatkes, “Bringing Ter Brugghen and Baburen Up-to-Date,” Bulletin du Musée National de
Varsovie 37 (1996): 218; and Leonard J. Slatkes and Wayne Franits, The Paintings of Hendrick ter
Brugghen (1588–1629): Catalogue Raisonné (Amsterdam and Philadelphia, 2007),114. Slatkes cites theexamples of Joos van Cleve’s Death of the Virgin altarpiece in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich and Pieter
Bruegel the Elder’s nocturnal grisaille of the same subject, now in Upton House in Banbury. Ultimately,
these examples can all be traced back to Germany, to Martin Schongauer’s influential engraving of ca.
1480 (B. 33). In arguing that the painting depicts the Death of the Virgin, Slatkes wanted to show that it
was Ter Brugghen, not Rembrandt, who created the first single-figured history scene.
9. A rare exception is the woodcut Death of the Virgin by Albrecht Altdorfer of ca. 1520, in which thedying Virgin, surrounded by the apostles, is holding the candle without any aid.
10. The key role of the twelve apostles becomes even clearer if we consider the apocryphal source for thissubject matter: Jacob de Voragine’s Golden Legend. See Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend:
Readings on the Saints, trans. William Granger Ryan, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1993), 2: 79–80. According tothis story, the apostles were flown in on clouds from all corners of the world at the Virgin’s request,
because she wanted them around her when she died.
11. Albert Blankert, A Newly Discovered Painting by Hendrick ter Brugghen (Zwolle, 1991),18, interpreted
this vertical stroke as the remnant of a 4. This, however, is not possible, since the distance between the
stroke and the 2 is too small. Slatkes, in Leonard J. Slatkes and Wayne Franits, The Paintings ofHendrick ter Brugghen (1588–1629): Catalogue Raisonné (Amsterdam, 2007), 115 n 16, did not see any
vertical stroke when he researched the painting and dated it to ca. 1626–27. Nancy Krieg in 2010 and
Annette Rupprecht in 2011 independently examined the painting. Ultraviolet light best revealed thetraces of paint in the last digit. They both suggested that the vertical stroke looked most like a 1. The
present author also saw the vertical stroke while examining the signature under ultraviolet light. Aftercomparing Ter Brugghen’s numerical digits in other dated paintings, it seems that the stroke cannot be
part of a 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, or 9. It could have been a 1. Because the bottom of the stroke is curved ever soslightly to the right, it could also have been part of a 6.
12. See Albert Blankert, A Newly Discovered Painting by Hendrick ter Brugghen (Zwolle, 1991), 26–29.
Leonard J. Slatkes and Wayne Franits, The Paintings of Hendrick ter Brugghen (1588–1629): Catalogue
Raisonné (Amsterdam, 2007), 114–15, list this as an option, but also include the reference in the 1667
inventory, 266, no. L6, in the section of lost paintings by Ter Brugghen.

ProvenancePossibly Frederick Vroom, Haarlem, by 1667.
Private collection, Switzerland [French art market; Charles Roelofsz, B. V., Amsterdam, ca. 1991;© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Allegory of Faith
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Noortman Master Paintings, Maastricht, 1993].
Private collection, Belgium [on consignment to Simon Dickinson Ltd., London, 1999; Johnny van
Haeften, Ltd., London, 2009].
From whom acquired by the present owner, 2009.

Exhibition History
London, Robert Noortman Gallery, “Dutch and Flemish Old Master Paintings,” May–June 1993, no. 8.
Washington, National Gallery of Art, April–June 1995, on loan with the permanent collection [lent byRobert Noortman Gallery].
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, March–August 2010, on loan with the permanent collection[lent by the present owner].
Utrecht, Centraal Museum, on loan with the permanent collection, January 2015–January 2016 [lent by
the present owner].
Paris, Museé du Louvre, “Masterpieces of The Leiden Collection: The Age of Rembrandt,” 22
February–22 May 2017 [lent by the present owner].
Beijing, National Museum of China, “Rembrandt and His Time: Masterpieces from The Leiden
Collection,” 17 June–3 September 2017 [lent by the present owner].
Shanghai, Long Museum, West Bund, “Rembrandt, Vermeer and Hals in the Dutch Golden Age:
Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection,” 23 September 2017–25 February 2018 [lent by the present
owner].
Moscow, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, “The Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer: Masterpiecesof The Leiden Collection,” 28 March 2018–22 July 2018 [lent by the present owner].
St. Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum, “The Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer: Masterpieces of
The Leiden Collection,” 5 September 2018–13 January 2019 [lent by the present owner].
Abu Dhabi, Louvre Abu Dhabi, “Rembrandt, Vermeer and the Dutch Golden Age. Masterpieces fromThe Leiden Collection and the Musée du Louvre,” 14 February–18 May 2019 [lent by the present
owner].

References
Bredius, Abraham. Kunstler-Inventare: Urkunden zur Geschichte der hollandischen Kunst des XVIten,
XVIIten und XVIIIten Jahrhunderts. 8 vols. The Hague, 1915–22, 2: 646, no. 78. (possibly)
Blankert, Albert. A Newly Discovered Painting by Hendrick ter Brugghen. Zwolle, 1991.
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Talley, Mansfield Kirby, Jr. “Old Masters: New Discoveries.” The Connoisseur 221 (October 1991):
139.
Verbeek, Hans. “A Woman with Candle and Cross.” Noortman Dutch and Flemish Old Master Paintings.
Sales cat. Maastricht and London, 1993, no. 8.
Huys Janssen, Paul. “Jan van Bijlert (1597/98–1671): Painter in Utrecht.” PhD diss. University of
Utrecht, 1994, 132.
Blankert, Albert. “Hendrick ter Brugghen.” Allgemeines Künstler Lexikon. Munich and Leipzig, 1996,
504–5.
Slatkes, Leonard J. “Bringing Ter Brugghen and Baburen Up-to-Date.” Bulletin du Musée National de
Varsovie 37 (1996): 216–19, no. 11.
Slatkes, Leonard J. “Musical Group.” In Masters of Light: Dutch Painters in Utrecht during the Golden
Age. Edited by Joaneath A. Spicer and Lynn Federle Orr, 251–54, under no. 40, 423 n. 5. Exh. cat.
Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery; San Francisco, Fine Art Museum. New Haven and London, 1997.
Huys Jannsen, Paul. Jan van Bijlert (1597/98–1671): Painter in Utrecht. Utrecht, 1998, 123.
Neumeister, Mirjam. Das Nachtstück mit Kunstlicht in der niederländischen Malerei und Graphik des 16.
und 17. Jahrhunderts. Petersberg, 2003, 201, 203, no. 142, 263 n. 439.
Slatkes, Leonard J., and Wayne Franits. The Paintings of Hendrick ter Brugghen (1588–1629): Catalogue
Raisonné. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, 2007, 114–15, no. A23, 157, 167, 200, 271, 327, no. 22.
McCarthy, Alexa.

“Allegory of Faith.” In Masterpieces of The Leiden Collection: The Age of

Rembrandt. Edited by Blaise Ducos and Dominique Surh, 32, no. 6. Exh. cat. Paris, Musée du Louvre.
Paris, 2017.
Yeager-Crasselt, Lara. “Rembrandt and His Time: China and the Dutch Republic in the Golden Age.” In
Rembrandt and His Time: Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection. Edited by Lara Yeager-Crasselt, 8;13, no. 6. Translated by Li Ying. Exh. cat. Beijing, National Museum of China. Beijing, 2017
Yeager-Crasselt, Lara. “Allegory of Faith.” In Rembrandt and His Time: Masterpieces from The Leiden
Collection. Edited by Lara Yeager-Crasselt, 32–33; 173, no. 6. Translated by Li Ying. Exh. cat. Beijing,
National Museum of Chian. Beijing, 2017.
Long Museum, West Bund. Rembrandt, Vermeer and Hals in the Dutch Golden Age: Masterpieces fromThe Leiden Collection. Exh. cat. Shanghai, Long Museum, West Bund. Shanghai, 2017, 54–55.
Yeager-Crasselt, Lara. “The Leiden Collection and the Dutch Golden Age.” In The Age of Rembrandt
and Vermeer: Masterpieces of The Leiden Collection. Edited by Polina Lyubimova, 21; 31. Translated by
Daria Babich and Daria Kuzina. Exh. cat. Moscow, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts; St.
Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum. Moscow, 2018.
Yeager-Crasselt, Lara. “Allegory of Faith.” In The Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer: Masterpieces of The
Leiden Collection. Edited by Polina Lyubimova, 214–15; 247, no. 74. Translated by Daria Babich andDaria Kuzina. Exh. cat. Moscow, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts; St. Petersburg, The State
Hermitage Museum. Moscow, 2018.
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Yeager-Crasselt, Lara. “The Leiden Collection and the Dutch Golden Age.” In Rembrandt, Vermeer andthe Dutch Golden Age. Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection and the Musée du Louvre. Edited by
Blaise Ducos and Lara Yeager-Crasselt, 28. Exh. cat. Abu Dhabi, Louvre Abu Dhabi. London, 2019.
[Exhibition catalogue also published in French and Arabic.]
Blanc, Jan. “Being Modern, Being Dutch: The Seventeenth-Century Invention of the Golden Age.” In
Rembrandt, Vermeer and the Dutch Golden Age. Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection and the Muséedu Louvre. Edited by Blaise Ducos and Lara Yeager-Crasselt, 39. Exh. cat. Abu Dhabi, Louvre Abu
Dhabi. London, 2019. [Exhibition catalogue also published in French and Arabic.]
Ducos, Blaise, and Lara Yeager-Crasselt, eds. Rembrandt, Vermeer and the Dutch Golden Age.
Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection and the Musée du Louvre. Exh. cat. Abu Dhabi, Louvre Abu
Dhabi. London, 2019, 74–5, no. 14. [Exhibition catalogue also published in French and Arabic.]

Technical Summary
The support, a medium-weight, plain-weave fabric, has been lined. All four tacking margins have been
almost entirely removed. Narrow remnants remain and there is cusping along all four edges. Neither the warp
nor the weft threads run parallel to the stretcher edges. There is one paper label but no wax collection seals,
stencils, other labels or import stamps on the lining or stretcher.
A light-colored ground has been thinly and evenly applied. The paint has been applied with loose fluid
brushstrokes in thin, smooth, transparent glazes through the background allowing the underlayers to show
through. The figure’s blue mantle, although not tested, is most likely painted with smalt, and the shadowed
portions have faded.[1]No underdrawing is readily apparent in infrared images captured at 780–1000 nanometers. There are no
obvious pentimenti or compositional changes visible in the images or the X-radiograph.
The painting is signed and dated in light-colored paint on the brown background along the center of the leftedge. The artist’s name and the word fecit are legible with the naked eye, and the first three numerals of thedate can be made out under magnification. The last numeral of the date is extremely faint, and has been readas a 1, 4, or 6.
The painting was cleaned, lined, and restored in 2010. It remains in a good state of preservation, although theblue pigment of the mantle has faded and a short diagonal tear through the figure’s proper left hand has been
restored.

Technical Summary Endnotes

1. According to the 2011 Tratment Report: “This glass-based pigment shows signs of pigment degradation.
This is very common in works by Ter Brugghen. An extreme example of which can be found in St.
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Sebastian Tended by Woman in the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College.” Nancy Krieg treatedthe Oberlin painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Paintings Conservation
Department, under John Brealey.

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