( fl Rome, 1620–30). Painter. In 1943 Roberto Longhi grouped ten pictures around an anonymous work, the Judgement of Solomon (c. 1620; Rome, Gal. Borghese) and titled the artist the Master of the Judgement of Solomon. This small oeuvre included five Apostles from the Casa Gavotti in Rome (Florence, Fond. Longhi) and a Denial of St Peter (Rome, Pal. Barberini). In 1957 it was enlarged by the discovery of a spectacular Christ among the Doctors (Langres, St Martin), which may have come from the collection of Vincenzo Giustiniani. The Judgement of Solomon and the Christ among the Doctors, distinguished by classical compositions, gravity of expression and a limited range of greys and browns, suggest a powerful and original artist who was active in Rome between 1620 and 1630. The artist’s nationality remains controversial, although it is accepted that he was not an Italian. Longhi attempted to identify him as a French painter; it has also been suggested that he may be Gérard Douffet, a painter from Liège who was in Rome between 1614 and 1622, but this remains a complex problem since there are no documented works from Douffet’s Roman period. The anonymous Master’s works, however, have close affinities with those of Dirck van Baburen, who was in Rome between 1613 and 1620, and with those of Jusepe de Ribera and his followers Giovanni Do and Bartolomeo Passante (1614–78), and scholars now tend to see him as a northern painter who was responsive to Flemish, Roman and Neapolitan influences. He remains one of the most mysterious artists of the international Caravaggesque movement, whose oeuvre bears witness to the difficulties of determining the direction of exchanges and of influences between Naples and Rome, Italy and Flanders.

Part of the Masters, anonymous, and monogrammists family

• Judgement of Solomon, Master of the
  • Douffet, Gérard