Mysterious Masterpiece: Cold Case Torrentius (2016)

Directed by: Maarten de Kroon | 69 minutes | documentary

In the Rijksmuseum hangs a relatively unknown masterpiece by a master painter from the seventeenth century whose name hardly anyone knows. Johannes Torrentius might have been as famous today as Rembrandt or Vermeer. It wasn’t a lack of popularity during its prolific life, nor was it the tragic turn it would take later. After all, a little tragedy often does an artist’s reputation and legacy well. It is important that you still have something to leave behind. Only a single painting and a watercolor of Torrentius remain. The rest of his illustrious work, of which we know something from inventories, has been burned or has disappeared without a trace.

There is a tinge of mystery surrounding the life and work of Torrentius: Was he a Rosicrucian? And how can we reconcile his notoriously licentious way of life with the call for moderation in his work ‘Emblematic still life with jug, glass, pitcher and bridle’ (1614)? Is the tune, whose notes and text are depicted at the bottom of the still life, with its tritone (diabolos in musica) perhaps a hint of a double layer in this, at first sight, not very striking work?

‘Mysterious Masterpiece: Cold Case Torrentius’ tells the story of a selection of Torrentius connoisseurs who leave very little of this interesting business: Torrentius was not a member of a forbidden mystical order, but painted spicy pictures on order for the enthusiast, and earned a fortune along. It must be said that his technique, for still lifes in particular, was unsurpassed, if only because we have no idea how he worked.

An investigation into the production method of ‘Emblematic still life with jug, glass, pitcher and bridle’ forms the common thread in ‘Mysterious Masterpiece’. In a very mosaic-like narration, the many Torrentius connoisseurs jostle each other in remarkably short sound bites to contribute to the real secret, namely how Torrentius managed to make his still life look so photographic, using experimental painting means, and then apparently even without using a brush (with a few exceptions, no brush strokes are visible). It seems that Torrentius has conjured up his work as an alchemist on the canvas.

It is especially this quest in which the painting is placed under the microscope and examined with X-rays that make ‘Mysterious Masterpiece’ a fascinating documentary.