Jan van Noordt (also Joan van Noort), Dutch painter, active in Amsterdam. He was the pupil of Jacob Backer who greatly influenced his early style, but he also experimented with the effects of colour and light that Rembrandt had employed in his biblical small figure paintings. He produced history, mythological and religious paintings as well as portraits and Italianate landscapes.
He was the teacher of the painter Johannes Voorhout.
The subject of this painting is a rare one, and is often confused with the story of Esther and Ahasuerus. King David is old and weak when Bathsheba visits him. Bathsheba reminds him that he promised that her son Solomon would be king after him. This is a sensitive matter, as David’s son Adonijah has already made himself king - without telling his father. David listens to her and orders that Solomon is to be anointed king over Israel.
For Jan van Noordt the source of inspiration was certainly the 1646 painting of the same subject by Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, now in Prague.
The painting is on long-term loan to the Sz�pm�v�szeti M�zeum, Budapest from a private collection.
