Hendrick de Somer

Hendrick de Somer (1602–c.1655) was a Flemish painter who spent most of his life and career in Italy. He was mainly active in Naples.

Life

Hendrick de Somer is generally identified with the 'Enrico Fiammingo' mentioned as a pupil of Jusepe de Ribera by the Italian art historian and painter Bernardo de' Dominici in the Vite dei Pittori, Scultori, ed Architetti Napolitani (Lives of the Neapolitan Painters, Sculptors, and Architects) (1742-1743). Until quite recently the artist was confused with a Dutch painter from Amsterdam with an almost identical name called Hendrick van Someren or Hendrick van Somer. The credit for discovering the true identity of Hendrick de Somer is due to Ulisse Prota-Giurleo who discovered a record of an 'Enrico de Somer' acting as a witness in a legal procedure relating to the marriage of the painter Viviano Codazzi in Naples. He remained active in that city until 1655. His works deal principally with biblical and mythological subject matter. The attributions of work to Hendrick de Somer are based principally on the only three signed and dated works by de Somer: the Caritas Romana of 1635 in a private Roman collection and two versions of St. Jerome in the desert, one in the Trafalgar Galleries in London from 1651, the other in the Galleria Nazionale di Palazzo Barberini in Rome from 1652. The latter originally carried a fake de Ribera signature, which had been painted over the signature 'Enrico So[mer] f. and the date '1652'.

Another key work for identifying the artist's work is the altarpiece of the Baptism of Christ (Naples, Santa Maria della Sapienza) of 1641, which can be attributed with certainty to de Somer since the documentation relating to its commission has been preserved. Later, like many of his Neapolitan colleagues, de Somer moved away from de Ribera's tenebrism in response to the growing taste for Roman-Bolognese art in Naples. His work shows no trace of his Northern origins.

De Somer is believed to have been in contact with Matthias Stom during the latter's stay in Naples in the 1630s. Hendrick's works such as Caritas Romana (1635, private collection) and Tobias curing his father's blindness (c. 1635, Banco Commerciale Italiana, Collezione Intesa Sanpaolo) can be seen as de Somer's reaction to the northern realism of Matthias Stom. In later compositions de Somer reflects influences deriving from the example of other Neapolitan masters who asserted themselves in those years, such as Massimo Stanzione and Bernardo Cavallino. Hendrick's palette moved gradually away from the tenebrism of Ribera and opened up to the neo-Venetian color, which in that period came to replace the chiaroscuro of the Caravaggisti. Works like his multiple versions of Lot and his daughters and his Samson and Delilah are examples of this evolution.

A work with a certain later date is the Saint Jerome reading of 1652 (Rome, Galleria Nazionale di Palazzo Barberini). De Somer created many paintings of the saint, as did his master de Ribera who had popularised this theme. Notes and references