Utrecht School

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The term Utrecht School refers to a group of painters of the Baroque school^[1] active in the city of Utrecht in the Netherlands in the early part of the seventeenth century. They are also known as the Dutch or Utrecht Caravaggisti.

The members of the group had in common that they were all strongly influenced by the recently deceased Caravaggio, who died in 1610. Painters such as Dirck van Baburen, Gerrit van Honthorst and Hendrick Terbrugghen were all in Rome in the decade 1610–1620, a time when the chiaroscuro of Caravaggio's later style was very influential. Adam Elsheimer, also in Rome at the same time, was probably also an influence on them. Back in Utrecht, they painted religious pictures and also the genre pieces that Caravaggio himself had abandoned in his later career. In the late 1620s, by which time van Baburen and Terbrugghen had died, van Honthorst's style changed, and he had a long career as a portraitist and painter of mythological scenes influenced by Rubens.

The Utrecht School can be considered to have influenced later artists such as Georges de La Tour and Jacques Bellange in Lorraine, and Rembrandt in the Netherlands.

[edit] References

• ^  Murray, P. & L. (1996), Dictionary of art and artists. Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-051300-0.