(b Amersfoort, nr. Utrecht, c.1600; d ?Sicily, c.1650). Dutch painter, active mainly in Italy. In scholarly writings he is often called Matthias Stomer, but ‘Stom’ is the form that occurs in contemporary documents and on his only signed and dated picture, St Isidore Agricola (1641, Chiesa degli Agostiniani, Caccamo, Sicily). The details of his life are obscure, but he was one of the most prolific and committed of Caravaggesque artists, working in the master's idiom long after it had gone out of fashion in most places. He is first documented in 1630, in Rome. A few years later he moved to Naples, and from about 1640 he lived in Sicily. There are about 200 surviving pictures by him, mainly religious works but also including mythological and genre scenes.