Artist: Simon Kick
Date: 1644
Size: 130 x 156 cm
Technique: Oil On Canvas
The Parable of the Unworthy Wedding Guest was bought in 1802 as a Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, and it was accordingly catalogued after the painting was transferred from the Nationale Konst-Gallery in The Hague to the Koninklijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1808.4 For a long time after that it was thought to be by Samuel van Hoogstraten until Hofstede de Groot assigned it to Claes Moeyaert in 1899.5 Astrid Tümpel suggested an artist from the circle of Salomon de Bray,6 and lately the names of Jacob Backer and, most recently, Dirck van Santvoort came up.7 All of these attributions failed to convince. The composition is actually closely related to Simon Kick’s signed Elisha Refusing Naaman’s Gifts of 1644 (fig. a),8 in which he showed off his talents as a history painter in a large format. Apart from the similarities between the prophet Elisha and the king in the Rijksmuseum picture there is Kick’s typical practice of placing the protagonist on the right and shown from the side, as he did in several genre pieces.9 In a drawing attributed to Kick there is a biblical figure seen from the same vantage point.10 Both paintings also share a comparable rendering of the velvet of the cloaks. There are also correspondences in the horizontal design with a fairly large number of people, all at equal height, in the group on the far right, in the central view through to the background, and in the fall of light accentuating parts of the scene. In addition to these arguments for assigning The Parable of the Unworthy Wedding Guest to Kick, the characterization of the figures also fits neatly within the artist’s oeuvre.11 Many of his pictures from the first half of the 1640s are in dark, brownish tones, while the protagonist’s attire is in bright and more opaque colours. The present work will have been made at roughly the same time as Elisha Refusing Naaman’s Gifts. The Old Testament parable of the unworthy guest tells of a king who gives a feast to celebrate his son’s wedding. When many of the invitees refuse to come, and even insult and murder some of his staff, he flies into a rage, punishing those who has been ungrateful and giving orders to ask passers-by to join the banquet instead. One of them, though, is not suitably dressed. ‘Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth’ (Matthew 22:13). The first group in the parable stands for those who reject the call to become Christians, while the second one is welcomed into the kingdom of God with open arms, provided they have prepared themselves properly.12 The story was not often depicted, and when it was, the artist devoted as much attention to the banquet as to the ejection of the unworthy guest.13 Kick, though, focuses on the man’s removal and follows the visual tradition based on Matthew by showing him being carried out horizontally, tied hand and foot. Gerbrand Korevaar, 2023 See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements
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