Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Christ Driving the Merchants from the Temple
Bartolomeo Manfredi Italian
Not on view
The subject—one Valentin also treated in a work on view in this exhibition—is Christ driving out of the Temple of Jerusalem the merchants whose commerce profaned the sacred place ("My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves" [Matthew 21:13]). The figure whose bare back establishes the foreground plane in physical, tactile terms must have impressed Valentin as much as the quality of dynamic movement.
Manfredi was one of Caravaggio’s most admired followers and this famous picture belonged to Cardinal Fabrizio Verospi, who owned other Caravaggesque paintings.
Due to rights restrictions, this image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.
