Abraham Vinck

[2] He is now mainly known for being the co-owner together with his Flemish colleague and business partner Louis Finson of two paintings by Caravaggio.

In a letter written to Antonio Ruffo dated 1673, the art dealer Giacomo de Castro mentions that Vinck was a famous portrait painter residing in Naples who was Flemish and a very close friend of Caravaggio ('amicissimo di Caravaggio').

[1] Abraham Vinck was in Naples also a friend and business partner of Louis Finson, a Flemish painter and art dealer from Bruges.

This makes clear that despite his stay in Italy and marriage to an Italian bride, he was of the Calvinist faith.

[7] Art historian Marijke Osnabrugge believes that Abraham Vinck briefly returned to Naples in 1615 and again between 1617 and 1618.

However, the Italian art historian Giuseppe Porzio has pointed out that another painter also named Abraham Vinck (or Vinx), who was somewhat younger, worked in Napels in the 1610s.

He was the landlord of Louis Finson in 1616–1617 who rented from him a residence on the Oudezijds Voorburgwal in Amsterdam, which the artists may have shared.

[2] A Christ lifted up by angels (At Bertolami Fine Arts Rome auction of 14 November 2018 lot 178) has been attributed to him.

The two paintings are mentioned again, this time in the will and testament dated 19 September 1617 prepared by Finson in Amsterdam.

In his will Finson left Vinck his share in the two Caravaggio paintings that they had owned jointly since Naples.

Caravaggio's work, which was a gift of Antwerp's leading artists and an expression of their deep religious devotion had thus become the object of looting by the Austrian rulers of Flanders.

[10] There was no trace of the second Caravaggio representing Judith beheading Holofernes co-owned by Vinck and Finson since the early 1600s.

A painting of Judith beheading Holofernes discovered in an attic in Toulouse in 2014 is believed by certain scholars to be the lost Caravaggio.