Christ Driving the Money Changers out of the Temple

1618 · Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome

religious

The history of this painting has been traced back as far as 1666, when it was mentioned as part of the Spanish royal collection. In the first years of the nineteenth century Napoleon's uncle Cardinal Fesch added it to his boundless collection, acquiring it in all likelihood through the standard Napoleonic method of collecting by plunder. Upon the dispersal of the Fesch possessions in a series of sales in the 1840's, this important painting entered the collection of the Monte di Piet, from which it passed to the National Gallery in 1895.

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Christ Driving the Money Changers out of the Temple

About the Artist

Valentin De Boulogne

1591 – 1632

Moise Valentin (also called Le Valentin and Valentin de Boulogne), French Caravaggesque painter active in Rome from about 1612. His life is obscure; the name 'Moise' (the French form of Moses) by which he was called was not his Christian name (which is unknown) but a corruption of the Italian form of 'monsieur'. He did, however, have one major public commission - The Martyrdom of Sts Processus and Martinian (Vatican, 1629-30), painted for St Peter's as a pendant to Poussin's Martyrdom of St Erasmus. About fifty works are attributed to him. They vary in subject - religious, mythological, and genre scenes and portraits - but the same models often seem to reappear in them, and all his work is marked by an impressively solemn, at times melancholic, dignity. He was one of the finest of Caravaggio 's followers and one of the most dedicated, still painting in his style when it had gone out of fashion. Baglione says that he died after taking a cold bath in a fountain following a drinking bout; his death was much lamented in the artistic community.

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