Monday, December 24, 2018

Giovan Paolo Lomazzo on St Veronica and St Luke

Domenico Fetti
Veronica's Veil
ca. 1618-22
oil on panel
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Mattia Preti
St Veronica with Veil
ca. 1655-60
oil on canvas
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Bernardo Strozzi
St Veronica with Veil
1620-25
oil on canvas
Museo del Prado, Madrid

"Everyone knows that this art is also highly respected in our times, for no church exists without the decoration of some noble painting honoring God or the saints.  Painting cannot be given any greater praise than to say that Christ himself used it: he made a portrait of his own face in the veil of the virgin St. Veronica and left an image of his whole body, front and back, on a shroud now in the possession of His Serene Highness the Duke of Savoy.  Everyone knows that St. Luke was a painter and engraver, executing, in both arts, many works . . ."

– from chapter six of Giovan Paolo Lomazzo's Idea of the Temple of Painting (1590), edited and translated by Jean Julia Chai (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013)

Francesco Mochi
St Veronica with Veil
1629-39
colossal marble statue
St Peter's Basilica, Rome

Anonymous printmaker after Francesco Mochi
Colossal Statue of St Veronica with Veil in St Peter's Basilica, Rome
ca. 1630-50
etching
British Museum

Guercino
St Veronica displaying the Veil to St Peter
before 1666
drawing
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Anonymous artist working in Rome or Bologna
Veronica's Veil
17th century
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Shroud of Turin
probably manufactured in the 13th-14th century
linen
Cathedral of St John the Baptist, Turin

Guercino
St Luke displaying his portrait of the Virgin
1652-53
oil on canvas
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City

Jan Gossaert
St Luke painting the Madonna
ca. 1515-25
oil on panel
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Rogier van der Weyden
St Luke drawing the Virgin
ca. 1435-40
oil and tempera on panel
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Cornelis Bloemaert
St Luke painting the Madonna (with the painter Raphael looking on)
ca. 1620-56
engraving
British Museum

Dirk Jacobsz Vellert
St Luke painting the portrait of the Virgin
1526
etching and engraving
British Museum

Jacob Matham after Hendrik Goltzius
St Luke painting the portrait of the Madonna
ca. 1614
engraving
British Museum