BABUREN, THEODOOR DIRK van. – Dutch painter, born perhaps in Utrecht. There he was a pupil of Paulus Moreelse and after 1611 lived for some time in Rome. Around 1621 he returned to Holland, where he seems to have died while still young. He belonged to the group of foreign followers of Caravaggio, together with Gerard Honthorst (Gherardo delle Notti), whom he closely resembled, 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 that depicting the Disputa di Cristo con i dottori, are attributed to him, though with some uncertainty. Certainly his is the painting of the Deposizione placed on the altar, in which a resemblance may be discerned to Caravaggio’s painting of the same subject; here, however, Caravaggism loses the unity of its plastic representation through the breaking up of the luminous arrangement into many secondary projections; the colour, nevertheless, unlike that of the master, is brilliant and vivid.
The other paintings in the same chapel, representing Cristo che trasporta la Croce, Cristo deriso e l'Orazione nell'Orto, are considerably weaker.
In Rome B. also painted the Lavanda dei piedi, formerly in the Galleria Giustiniani and later transferred to the Galleria di Wiesbaden; the Cattura di Cristo, attributed to Manfredi, and the S. Rocco, considered to be by Carracci, both in the Galleria Borghese, the Cattura di Cristo, formerly in the Gavotti collection, and the Cristo tra i Dottori in the Galleria Mansi in Lucca may likewise be assigned to the same period of his activity.
The works of the subsequent period treat the commonest “genre” subjects of Dutch painting and no longer concern sacred art.
E. Lavagnino, S. Pietro in Montorio (Le chiese di Roma illustrate, 23), there n. d., pp. 13–16, 41–42 (with illustrations).