Gerrit Van Honthorst

Gerard van Honthorst (November 4, 1592 - April 27, 1656), also known as Gerrit van Honthorst and in Italy as Gherardo delle Notti for his nighttime candlelit subjects, was a Dutch Golden Age painter of Utrecht. He was initially trained at the school of Abraham Bloemaert, who exchanged the style of the Franckens for Italianate models at the beginning of the 16th century. Honthorst travelled to Italy in 1616, where he learned how to imitate the style of Michelangelo da Caravaggio. Home again about 1620, after acquiring a considerable practice in Rome, he set up a school at Utrecht which flourished. Together with his colleague Hendrick ter Brugghen, he represented the so-called Dutch Caravaggisti. In 1623 he was president of the Guild of St. Luke at Utrecht, where he had married his cousin. He soon became so fashionable that Sir Dudley Carleton, then English envoy at The Hague, recommended his works to the earl of Arundel and Lord Dorchester. In 1626 he hosted a dinner for Rubens, and painted him as the honest man sought for and found by Diogenes.