Spencer Alley: September 2015

Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Jerome

Juan de Valdés Leal
St. Jerome
1656-57
Prado

September 30th is the Feast of St. Jerome, patron saint of translators, scholars and librarians. St. Jerome made the first translation of the Bible into Latin around AD 400. From earliest times and into the Middle Ages he was depicted by illuminators and painters – engaged in study, engaged in spiritual penitence, engaged in communion with angels. St. Jerome remained in high favor with Baroque-inspired painters.

Bartolomé Murillo
St. Jerome Reading
c. 1650-52
Prado

Antonio Campi
St. Jerome
c. 1566
Prado

Leonello Spada
St. Jerome
c. 1610
Palazzo Barberini

Antonio de Pereda
St. Jerome
1643
Prado

Diego Polo
Penitent St. Jerome
c. 1630
Prado

Domenichino
An Angel Appears to St. Jerome
c. 1630
Prado

Joachim Patinir
Landscape with St. Jerome
1516-17
Prado

Lorenzo Lotto
Penitent St. Jerome
1546
Prado

Simon Vouet
St. Jerome with Angel
c. 1622-25
National Gallery of Art (U.S.)

Alonso Cano
Penitent St. Jerome
c. 1660
Prado

Francisco Camilo
St. Jerome with Angels
1651
Prado

I am grateful for the beautiful reproductions made available by Museo del Prado.

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Supporting Players

Angel Fragment
Painted alabaster, carved in England
late 15th century
Victoria & Albert Museum

The Victoria & Albert Museum houses many devotional reliefs fashioned from English alabaster. These were produced for export and for local use at Nottingham and London and at other centers with alabaster quarries – until the Protestant Reformation put a stop to the entire industry of religious image-making in England.

A crisply-carved angel with red wings (above) originally occupied the lower right-hand corner of a relief that featured the Assumption of the Virgin. When this Virgin was smashed by enraged Protestants, there happened to be a deft and clever child standing by who was able to grab the angel and slip it into a safe pocket before anyone noticed. And that is why posterity has the chance to look upon it now, despite the best efforts of officious humanity to destroy it.

St Stephen with Stones
Alabaster, carved in England
15th century
Victoria & Albert Museum

St. Barbara
Alabaster, carved in England
15th century
Victoria & Albert Museum

St. James the Great
Alabaster, carved in England
15th century
Victoria & Albert Museum

Seven prophets
Alabaster, carved in England
15th century
Victoria & Albert Museum

A Bishop, with kneeling Donor
Alabaster, carved in England
15th century
Victoria & Albert Museum

St. Catherine, the Beheading
Alabaster, carved in England
15th century
Victoria & Albert Museum

St. Peter Receiving Souls
Alabaster, carved in England
15th century
Victoria & Albert Museum

Assumption of the Virgin
Alabaster, carved in England
15th century
Victoria & Albert Museum

Coronation of the Virgin
Alabaster, carved in England
15th century
Victoria & Albert Museum

Coronation of the Virgin
Alabaster, carved in England
c. 1400
Victoria & Albert Museum

Monday, September 28, 2015

Gerard David

Gerard David
Christ Blessing
c. 1500-05
Metropolitan Museum

Gerard David
Madonna & Child
c. 1520
Prado

Gerard David (c. 1455-1523) was a Dutch painter who settled at an early age in the wealthy Flemish capital of Bruges. There he worked out a personal style that assimilated Italian influences. This he did so successfully that commissions came in not only from Flemish patrons but from native Italians who shipped David's altarpieces directly to Italy, a destination the artist himself never reached.

Gerard David
Christ Taking Leave of His Mother
c. 1500
Metropolitan Museum

Gerard David
Angel of the Annunciation
1506
Metropolitan Museum

The Nativity triptych below, located at the Metropolitan Museum, has lost the outer panels from the backs of the two side wings. These were painted with forest landscapes, empty of figures. Art historians identify these panels as among the first non-populated landscapes ever painted in Europe. They are now owned separately by the Rijksmuseum (and displayed here below the triptych proper).

Gerard David
Nativity with Donors & St. Jerome & St. Leonard
c. 1510-15
Metropolitan Museum

Gerard David
Nativity with Donors & St. Jerome & St. Leonard (back of left wing)
c. 1510-15
Rijksmuseum

Gerard David
Nativity with Donors & St. Jerome & St. Leonard (back of right wing)
c. 1510-15
Rijksmuseum

Gerard David
Virgin among the Virgins
1509
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen

Gerard David
Madonna & Child with Four Angels
c. 1510-15
Metropolitan Museum

Gerard David
The Judgment of Cambyses (panel 1)
1498
Groeningemuseum

Gerard David
The Judgment of Cambyses (panel 2)
1498
Groeningemuseum

The two-panel work above tells a story from Herodotus concerning the arrest and flaying of the corrupt Persian judge Sisamnes on the orders of the ruler Cambyses. The pair were originally hung publicly in Bruges as admonition and warning to Flemish officials of that day.

Gerard David
Rest on the Flight into Egypt
c. 1510
National Gallery of Art (U.S.)

Gerard David
Lamentation
c. 1495-1500
National Gallery of Art (U.K.)

Gerard David
Transfiguration
c. 1520
Church of Our Lady, Bruges

Gerard David
Madonna & Child with Angels
c. 1520
Prado

Sunday, September 27, 2015

Friezes

Simon Vouet
Time Defeated by Hope, Love & Beauty
1627
Prado

Yesterday's bacchanals imitated sarcophagus reliefs with a series of independent figures arranged across a shallow field, close to the picture plane. This method of organizing a composition retained tremendous prestige until the middle of the 19th century. The paintings gathered here were all conceived and constructed according to the one traditional model. The first group are secular friezes, the second group Biblical friezes.