Old Woman Praying

Matthias Stom (late 1630s–early 1640s)

Oil on canvas

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Old Woman Praying is an oil on canvas by Matthias Stom (c. 1600–after 1652), a Dutch or possibly Flemish Baroque painter who spent virtually his entire documented career in Italy. The painting depicts an elderly woman absorbed in devotion, rendered with Stom's characteristic Caravaggesque chiaroscuro: a concentrated light source carves her aged, wrinkled features from a darkened background, while prayer beads underscore the work's devotional theme. Stom specialized in exaggerated effects of light and shadow with leathery surfaces particularly well-suited to his frequent depiction of elderly figures, and this canvas stands as a compelling example of that recurring subject. Now held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the work was gifted to the institution by collector Ian Woodner in 1981.