Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo  c. 1480– c. 1548
NG 3092 
Saint Jerome

Nicholas Penny, 2004

Extracted from:
Nicholas Penny, The Sixteenth Century Italian Paintings, Volume I: Paintings from Bergamo, Brescia and Cremona (London: National Gallery Company and Yale University Press, 2004).

c. 1525–30

Oil on canvas, 121 × 160.4 cm

Signed on the rock:

jouānes jeron / imus de brisio / de sauoldis / faciebat

Support

The dimensions given above are those of the stretcher. The canvas is of a medium tabby weave. It has been lined with glue paste onto a modern canvas of similar weight, the reverse of which has been treated with wax. The modern pine stretcher has a single vertical crossbar. The original canvas has been turned over on all four edges. Paint samples have shown that the paint on the turnovers is original, so the picture has been reduced slightly (Saint Jerome’s toes seem too close to the edge of the painting, and the cropping of the little bush projecting from the ledge of the clifftop to the right seems awkward).

Materials and Technique

The canvas has a gesso ground. There is a beige priming, composed of lead white, red lead, a little lead‐tin yellow and a little black. The blue areas of the sky contain ultramarine, and lead‐tin yellow has been used for the yellow areas. The paint of the grey‐blue cloud is composed of lead white, azurite, red lake and black.¹

X‐radiography and infrared photography (figs 2 and 3) show that Jerome’s garment was originally painted falling across the right thigh, with a tail crossing the heel of his left foot. The best explanation for this change may be that the pose was originally conceived with the left knee raised, as was in fact usual in Italian paintings and sculptures of Jerome (fig. 4) made in the early sixteenth century.² The line of the saint’s back was also altered. The outermost fold of his garment is painted over the sky, and lower down part of it is painted over the landscape. The head was reserved but much of the beard and hair was also painted over the sky – owing to abrasion this is clearly visible to the naked eye. Gould believed that Jerome was originally depicted as short‐haired and cleanshaven, which supported his conviction that the painting was a portrait. The outline of the head in the technical photographs also, he believed, suggested this.³ However, it was not unusual for an artist to reserve a head in this way, and to paint the hair and beard with its tangled extremities over the sky. There seem to be no grounds for claiming that this part of the painting underwent any major revision (the idea has nevertheless been repeated by all scholars since Gould),⁴ and it should also be pointed out that a clean‐shaven Jerome would have been quite extraordinary.

Conservation

Otto Mündler, in the earliest known reference to this picture on 12 December 1855, described it as ‘unfortunately too much restored’.⁵ On 2 March 1858 he examined it again and concluded that ‘the whole is too much injured to be a good specimen’.⁶ It is likely that the painting was treated – probably in Milan – before, or when, it was acquired by Henry Layard in 1864. ‘Discoloured varnishes’ were removed in July 1916, when the painting came to the National Gallery. Some small curls on the neck of Saint Jerome, visible in photographs of the picture taken when the painting was in Layard’s palazzo in Venice, were evidently also removed – they were perhaps retouchings dating from 1864. The painting was revarnished by ‘Holder’ in 1929, polished in August 1946, and then relined, cleaned and restored between July and December 1971 in response to concerns about ‘heavy cupping with small areas of detached pigment’ on the open book and near the inscription. The varnish was also said to have darkened, and the retouchings to have discoloured. In 1960 Gould had considered the picture ‘too damaged’ for cleaning to be ‘practicable at present’.⁷

Condition

There are a few well‐preserved areas: these include the yellow areas of the sky, Saint Jerome’s garment, the open book and the rocks down one side of the cliffs (including the inscription). But much of the painting is severely abraded. There has been some reconstruction in the ultramarine mountains on the horizon and in the right arm of Christ on the cross, but many of the darker, shadowed areas – on the chest, in the beard and in the rocks on the right – remain relatively obscure. It is hard to believe that the lion, whose face and paw can just be discerned in a hollow on the lower right‐hand side, was not meant to be more visible. The waters of the lake in the distance on the left, presumably painted with azurite, have probably darkened. Craquelure is apparent in many areas, and the retouchings of 1971 have discoloured slightly.

Inscription

Signed on the right, below the book: jouānes jeron / imus de brisio / de sauoldis / faciebat (Giovanni Girolamo of Brescia, [page 341][page 342][page 343]of the Savoldo family, made this) (fig. 1). The handwriting is similar to that in other paintings by Savoldo.⁸

Attribution

The painting has always been accepted as a signed work by the artist.

Subject and Possible First Owner

To judge from inventories, paintings of Saint Jerome were more common than those of any other saint in a domestic setting in Venice in the early decades of the sixteenth century, and many small independent panels of Jerome painted in this period and in the last decades of the fifteenth century have survived from north‐east Italy. It was also a popular subject for small sculptures (see fig. 4).⁹ Jerome is sometimes represented as a scholar in his study, but more usually he is a penitent at his devotions in the desert, contemplating a crucifix and beating his breast with a stone (as here). This painting by Savoldo differs from earlier examples in that it is on canvas and is unusually large. Although there seems no reason to suppose that it was not made for a domestic environment, it is of a size that would also suit the side wall of a chapel.¹⁰

The painting may correspond to one for which Giovan Paolo Averoldi of Brescia recorded a payment of a ‘scudo doro’ to Savoldo on 28 November 1527 in his personal account book, ‘per conto de far un Sancto Hyeronimo’ (‘towards the cost of making a Saint Jerome’). The payment was made in Venice in the artist’s house, where his household witnessed it – ‘in casa sua, presenti li familij’.¹¹ There is, however, reason to think that Savoldo, whose second name was Jerome, may also have painted himself as this saint, and so there may have been another painting by him of this subject. Ridolfi in 1648 noted that ‘Madama d’Ardier, Ambasciatrice Francese, haveva un Gerolamo orante nel deserto’ (‘Madonna d’Ardier, wife of the French Ambassador, had a Saint Jerome praying in the desert’) by Savoldo, as well as a Mary Magdalene by him.¹²

Gould shrewdly observed that the outline of the church on the left in the background and its large size in relation to the houses in front of it suggest that it may have been inspired by SS. Giovanni e Paolo, near which church in Venice Savoldo was recorded as living in 1532.¹³

Dating

The head of Saint Jerome against the sky in near profile (fig. 6), with the silhouette enlivened by numerous fine strands of tangled hair and unkempt beard, is reminiscent of the bearded heads in Savoldo’s Pesaro altarpiece of c. 1525 (fig. 1, p. 337).¹⁴ In that painting Peter’s foreshortened hand holding the keys and Jerome’s hand holding the Bible match the bold way in which Jerome’s arm swings out of the front plane of the painting here. The landscape with its coastline fringed with buildings and boats is also similar, as are the rhythm and weight of the drapery.

There are also many similarities to other paintings by Savoldo that are generally agreed to belong to the early 1520s, or even earlier. Notably, the root in the rocks and the short twisted projecting branch on the lower right resemble the perch for the birds in the Prophet Elias (Washington, National Gallery of Art, Kress Collection) and in The Hermits Anthony Abbot and Paul (Venice, Accademia).¹⁵ The rocks serving as Jerome’s lectern, which seem in the upper part of the painting to belong further back in the picture space, resemble those in the middle distance of the Temptation of Saint Anthony (San Diego, Timken Art Gallery).¹⁶ The gesture of Saint Jerome’s left hand, half‐opened, prehensile or at least apprehensive, and as suggestive of his intellectual animation as is his furrowed brow, is found also in the Adoration of the Shepherds in the Galleria Sabauda, Turin, probably of the early 1520s, and in the portrait of a man as Saint George (Washington, National Gallery of Art, Kress Collection) and other paintings probably of the later 1520s.¹⁷

The painting seems bolder and more monumental than those of the early 1520s, but there seems no reason to date it later than 1530, as many scholars have proposed,¹⁸ and there is no reason why it could not be the picture of Saint Jerome which we know he was commissioned to paint in 1527.

Previous Owners

As noted above, the painting may be the one in the collection of Madame Ardier. Suzanne Ardier, daughter of Paul Ardier (1543–1638), Tésorier de l’Épargne, who commissioned the great series of portraits still to be seen in the Château de Beauregard near Blois,¹⁹ married Jean Dyel, Seigneur des Hameaux, Comte d’Auffey, who was French Ambassador in Venice from 1642 to 1645. Dyel, who died very rich in Paris in 1668, owned many modern and Renaissance Italian paintings; among the most valued (and covered by a damask curtain) was a Magdalen said to be by Veronese – just possibly Savoldo’s Magdalen mentioned by Ridolfi. The enthusiasm for these pictures was probably his wife’s, for it is she whom Ridolfi names as owning the Savoldos and she paid in 1644 for a Pietà by Guercino.²⁰

The painting is recorded for certain by Otto Mündler in his diary for 12 December 1855 as being in the possession of ‘Sr Bruschetti, proprietor of the Albergo reale’ in Milan. Bruschetti had a ‘quantity of pictures’, among which Mündler noted a ‘Guad. Ferrari, tolerably good’, a Mansuetti ‘changed into a J. Bellinus’ as well, and this ‘genuine, signed and interesting “Gir. Savoldo”, unfortunately too much restored’.²¹ He saw it again on 2 March 1858, when he was able to make a more accurate transcription of the inscription, obtain measurements and describe the colours: A claret‐coloured mantle with whitish lights … The harmony of the picture is the well‐known [sic] of Savoldo’s works: slate‐grey suffused with lilac. The flesh is very brown.’²² The circumstances of the sale of the Savoldo to Layard in 1864, apparently by Bruschetti’s heirs, seem not to have been recorded, but Layard had bought two paintings attributed to Ambrogio Bergognone from Bruschetti in 1856 (NG 3080 and 3081) on the advice of his friend the archaeologist Saverio Cavallari. The painting hung in Layard’s dining room in Ca Capello, opposite the paintings then attributed to Ercole Grandi (NG 3103 and 3104, now given to Lorenzo Costa), depicting the story of Moses.²³

Provenance

Bruschetti, Milan, by 12 December 1855. According to Adolfo Venturi, writing in 1912, it was acquired by Bruschetti from the Delfico family, also of Milan.²⁴ Bought by Henry Layard in 1864. Layard Bequest 1916.

Drawings

There is a magnificent drawing in black chalk on faded blue paper in the Louvre (fig. 5) which is preparatory for the head of Saint Jerome.²⁵ It was attributed to Titian until 1880, when Morelli recognised the connection with NG 3092.²⁶ In 1958 Gilbert advanced the theory that the head was not preparatory for the painting catalogued here although it may have been made for another version of the same composition, but he later retreated from this idea.²⁷ Gould, however, believed that the X‐radiography revealed that Savoldo had originally conceived of a clean‐shaven Jerome, and thus he favoured the idea that the drawing was not preparatory for the painting.²⁸ Gilbert also suggested that Luigi Cavenaghi had altered the painting of the hair to make it closer to the drawing Morelli had discovered.²⁹ However, it is not likely that Layard had the painting restored after 1880, and the connection between the drawn head and the painted one was close enough to satisfy most critics. Gilbert had been incorrectly informed that the painting ‘had not been touched’ since its arrival in London, and the curls on the saint’s neck were probably the work of a restorer c. 1864. They were cleaned off in London in 1916 (see above).

Engraving

A wood engraving of the painting, perhaps made from a photograph, serves as an illustration for Horatio Brown’s article on Layard’s pictures of 1896.

Exhibitions and Loans

Leeds 1868 (9); London 1869, South Kensington Museum (Layard Loan, no. 8); London 1870, Royal Academy (16); 1990 Brescia, Monastero di S. Giulia, and Frankfurt‐am‐Main, Schirn Kunsthalle (I.23).

Framing

The painting was given its present frame by Cecil Gould after it was cleaned in 1971. Since the frame was found ‘doing nothing in the depot’, it had perhaps previously been used for another of the Gallery’s pictures. It is a cassetta frame with gilt mouldings and a flat black frieze decorated at the corners with curling, fern‐like vegetation with an energetic whiplash pattern executed in sgraffito (fig. 7). The frame was presumably considerably altered for the painting, because the black has been resurfaced and the ends of the sgraffito decoration have been revised. The frame is Italian and probably dates from about 1600, but there is no certainty about where it was made. A similar cassetta frame can be found among the Kress frames in store at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC,³⁰ and there is another in the Lehman Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.³¹ A comparable frame, but with sharper mouldings, is on Guido Reni’s David with the Head of Goliath in the Uffizi.³² For a further discussion of black cassetta frames, see the entry for Lotto NG 2281 in this catalogue.

The painting’s previous frame is now on NG 67 (attributed to Studio of Rubens).³³ A gilt frame with a Roman eighteenth‐century profile but carved with a running pattern of a late seventeenth‐century French style, it is probably English work of the early nineteenth century. It has obviously been altered in size. The labels that were formerly attached to the back show that it was on the painting in Layard’s day.

Notes