The Incredulity of St Thomas

Entry

Apart from the obvious stylistic affinities with other works in his oeuvre, Crabeth’s authorship of this monumental Incredulity of St Thomas is secured by way of an inscription on a print by Cornelis van Dalen which reproduces the painting.⁵ In his 1981-82 review of Nicolson’s The International Caravaggesque Movement, Slatkes claimed that the painting is signed in the lower left corner.⁶ Recent examination of the painting, however, did not bring a signature to light.

Crabeth’s Incredulity was donated to the museum in 1902 by the old Catholic church of St Gertrudis in Utrecht, and it was long assumed that that church was also its original home. Van Eck, however, has argued that the secular priest Petrus Purmerent commissioned the work for the Gouda parish of St Jan Baptist. Crabeth executed three other paintings for Purmerent’s parish, beginning with the Carracci-inspired Assumption of the Virgin from 1628, for which the artist received 360 guilders.⁷ There is, moreover, no evidence that Crabeth worked in Utrecht or for Utrecht patrons, nor that he was in contact with the clergy of that town.⁸ As Van Eck has suggested, one of Purmerent’s successors in Gouda, Jacob Catz, may have taken the painting with him when he was transferred to the parish of St Gertrudis in Utrecht in 1689.⁹ It should be pointed out, however, that, unlike the three above-mentioned paintings commissioned by Purmerent, there is no direct evidence that places the Incredulity in Gouda. As appealing as it is, Van Eck’s suggestion should remain hypothetical. The likelihood that the present painting was commissioned by a clandestine church either in Gouda or Utrecht, and its stylistic proximity to Caravaggio’s work, indicate a dating to shortly after Crabeth’s return from Rome, that is between c. 1626 and 1630.

While Crabeth probably saw, and was influenced by Caravaggio’s Incredulity of St Thomas¹⁰ during his stay in Rome, he may also have known Ter Brugghen’s rendering of the theme produced in Utrecht around 1622 (SK-A-3908). Just as Ter Brugghen had done, Crabeth has reversed the direction of Caravaggio’s scene. The figure types in the present painting are more reminiscent of Caravaggio than of Ter Brugghen, but it does seem significant that Crabeth’s John the Evangelist holds his hands together in much the same manner as he does in the Utrecht artist’s painting. As in both Caravaggio’s and Ter Brugghen’s paintings, Crabeth’s dramatically lit figures are set before a neutral background. In all three paintings Christ forcefully clasps Thomas’s wrist and thrusts the apostle’s finger into his wound. It is only in Crabeth’s depiction, however, that Christ uses one of the fingers of his other hand to guide Thomas’s probing finger. Also unlike his potential models, Crabeth’s representation shows full-length figures and includes all 11 post-betrayal apostles. Far from being arranged simply in ‘monotoner Isokephalie’, as Schneider dismissively claimed,¹¹ the figures are divided into three groups, each forming a diagonally receding line, with Christ as the middle point. Crabeth also painted another version of the Incredulity using only five half-length figures.¹² The theme of doubt overcome by sudden insight expressed in scenes of the Incredulity more than likely had a contemporary appeal for Catholics living in a country where societal pressure to convert to Calvinism was high.¹³

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements

This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 52.