David de Haen

1597 – 1622

Dutch painter. He was born in Amsterdam and moved to Rome at a young age where he would remain the rest of his life. He was a key figure in the community of Northern artists who settled Rome in the first two decades of the 17th century, and was a close associate of Dirck van Baburen, one of the leading practitioners of the rapidly developing Caravagesque style in Rome. He worked with Dirk van Baburen in Rome on the decoration of the chapel of the Pietà in the church of San Pietro in Montorio (1617-20). Their pictures in the chapel were among the great works executed by Northern artists in Rome. In 1619 and the spring of 1620 de Haen and van Baburen were living in the same house in the Roman parish of Sant'Andrea delle Fratte. Following Baburen's departure for Utrecht, de Haen took up residence in Palazzo Giustiniani, where he was patronized by Vincenzo Giustinani. For that great Roman patron, de Haen executed his only fully documented independent work, an Entombment (destroyed in Berlin in 1945). De Haen was a follower of Caravaggio and painted religious and historical paintings. The body of work he left, which has only recently been rediscovered, consists of only about ten pictures.

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