Dirck van Baburen
1595 -1624
Dirck Jaspersz van Baburen was a Dutch painter associated with the Utrecht caravaggisti. He was a leading member of the Utrecht school and master of religious works, history pieces and genre scenes. His career was short, and only a few of his paintings are known today.
Dirck van Baburen was born in Wijk bij Duurstede, and his family moved to Utrecht when he was still young. He was also known as Teodoer van Baburen and Theodor Baburen.
He was in the Utrecht's Guild of St. Luke as a pupil of Paulus Moreelse. Between 1612 and 1615 he traveled to Rome. There, he befriended the close follower of Caravaggio, Bartolomeo Manfredi. Baburen was one of the earliest Dutch-speaking artists active in Rome in the seventeenth-century known as the "Bentvueghels" ("Birds of a Feather").
In late 1620 Baburen returned to Utrecht, where he began painting genre scenes. Between 1621 and 1624, the final years of Baburen's career, merged the visual characteristics learnt from Caravaggio and Manfredi into genre, mythological and history painting.
He was among the first artists to popularize genre subjects such as musicians and card players. One of his best-known works is "The Procuress" (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). It depicts a man offering a coin for the services of a lute-playing prostitute while an old woman, the lady's procuress, inspects his money.
Until his death in 1624, Baburen, along with Hendrick ter Brugghen and Gerard van Honthorst, helped establish the stylistic and thematic innovations now known as the Utrecht School of Caravaggisti. He was buried 1624, in the Buurkerk. Around 1629, Constantijn Huygens noted Baburen as one of the important Dutch painters active in the early decades of the seventeenth century.
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