Saint Jerome
Francesco Benaglio·c. 1470/1475
Historical Context
Francesco Benaglio painted this Saint Jerome around 1470-75, depicting the Church Father who translated the Bible into Latin (the Vulgate). Benaglio worked in Verona under the powerful influence of Andrea Mantegna, whose sculptural approach to figure painting transformed art in the Veneto. The scholar-saint in his study was a subject that allowed Renaissance painters to demonstrate both figural skill and mastery of still-life detail.
Technical Analysis
The tempera on spruce panel shows Benaglio's precise, hard-edged technique influenced by Mantegna's sculptural approach. The carefully rendered study setting with books and writing implements demonstrates the meticulous attention to realistic detail characteristic of the Mantegnesque school.
Provenance
Sir Francis Baring, 1st Bt. [1740-1810], London;[1] (sale, Christie's, London, 15 March 1805, no. 51, as by Francesco di Ladi);[2] (Thomas Winstanley, Liverpool); William Roscoe [1753-1831], Liverpool, by 1813, sold before 1816.[3] Private collection, England. (sale, Robinson, Fisher & Harding, London, 27 November 1924, no. 99, as _St. Francis_ by C. Crivelli).[4] Art market, London, by 1933.[5] (Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, Florence);[6] purchased July 1948 by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[7] gift 1952 to NGA. [1] On this collector, see Francis Haskell, _Rediscoveries in art: some aspects of taste, fashion, and collecting in England and France_, Ithaca, 1976: 72. [2] Burton Fredericksen (in _The Index of paintings sold in the British Isles during the nineteenth century_, 4 vols. Santa Barbara, 1988: 1:49, 295) established the painting's ownership, which is not specified in the sale catalogue, on the basis of an annotated copy of the catalogue in the files of Christie's in London. [3] See Michael Compton, "William Roscoe and Early Collectors of Italian Primitives," _Liverpool Bulletin_ 9 (1960-1961): 47. Hugh Macandrew (letter of 11 September 1961 to William Campbell, in NGA curatorial files) transcribes a description of the painting in Roscoe's hand from a manuscript catalogue of his collection (Roscoe Papers, Liverpool Library, 3897). [4] Everett Fahy (his letter of 19 November 1984 in NGA curatorial files) called attention to a Cooper negative of the painting in the Frick Art Reference Library in New York; the photograph, taken on the occasion of the sale in 1924 in London, shows the painting dirty and with a check running vertically through the figure, but otherwise with an aspect not unlike the present one. [5] According to Evelyn Sandberg-Vavalà, "Francesco Benaglio," _Art in America_ 21 (1933): 62-63. [6] By April 1948 (the date of Roberto Longhi's expertise, copy in NGA curatorial files), the panel must already have been with Contini Bonacossi, for whom Longhi wrote his opinion in Italian (his expertises for the Kress Foundation are usually in English). [7] The Kress Foundation made an offer to Contini Bonacossi on 7 June 1948 for a group of twenty-eight paintings, including the Benaglio; the offer was accepted on 11 July 1948 (see copies of correspondence in NGA curatorial files, see also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/1832).
