BABUREN, THEODOOR DIRK van. - Dutch painter, b. perhaps at Utrecht. There he was a pupil of Paulus Moreelse, and after 1611 he stayed for some time in Rome. Around 1621 he returned to Holland, where he seems to have died still young. He belonged to the band of foreign followers of Caravaggio, together with Gerard Honthorst (Gherardo delle Notti), to whom he came very close, with Wouter Pietersz Crabeth, Hendrik Terbrugghen, Theodor Rombouts, etc.
His principal work is the decoration of the chapel of the Pietà in S. Pietro in Montorio in Rome, where all the paintings, except the one depicting the Disputation of Christ with the Doctors, are to be attributed to him, though with some uncertainty. Certainly his is the picture of the Deposition placed on the altar, in which one discerns a resemblance to the painting of the same subject by Caravaggio; here, however, Caravaggism loses its unity of plastic representation through the shattering of the light scheme into many secondary highlights; the color, though, unlike the master's, is bright and lively.
The other paintings, in the same chapel, representing Christ Carrying the Cross, Christ Mocked and the Prayer in the Garden are much weaker.
In Rome B. also painted the Washing of the Feet, formerly in the Giustiniani Gallery, later passed to the Wiesbaden Gallery; to the same period of his activity may also be assigned the Capture of Christ, given to Manfredi, the St. Roch held to be by Carracci, both in the Borghese Gallery, the Capture of Christ, formerly in the Gavotti collection, and the Christ among the Doctors in the Mansi Gallery at Lucca.
The works of the following period treat the "genre" subjects most common to Dutch painting and no longer concern sacred art.