Ludovico Carracci

Italian, 1555–1619

The Vision of Saint Jerome, 1594–1598

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Medium: Paintings, Oil on canvas
Size: 16.12 x 12.25 in. (40.9 x 31.1 cm.)

250,000 USD

Robert Simon Fine Art

New York

About this Artwork

Movement: Baroque Art
Provenance: Probably Sampieri Collection, Palazzo Sampieri Senatorio, Bologna, by the late 18th century

Private Collection, England, as Guercino, until 1933; when acquired by:

Hermann Voss, Berlin and Wiesbaden, 1933–1937; by whom sold to:

Galerie Stern, Düsseldorf; their forced sale, “Die Bestände Der Galerie Stern Düsseldorf,” Lempertz, Cologne, 13 November 1937, lot 181; where acquired by:

Private Collection, Rhineland, Germany

Private Collection, Zürich, Switzerland, by whom sold, Lempertz, Cologne, 20 May 2000, lot 625; where acquired by:

Richard L. Feigen, New York, 2000–2009; by whom voluntarily restituted to the heirs of Max Stern:

Dr. and Mrs. Max Stern Foundation, Montreal, 2009–present
Exhibitions: “Italienische Malerei des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts,” Wiesbaden, Nassauisches Landesmuseum, May–June 1935, as Ludovico Carracci, lent by Hermann Voss, and on long-term loan to the museum until 1937.

Montreal, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 2009–2018.
Literature: Marcello Oretti, Le pitture che si ammirano nelli palaggi e case de’ nobili città di Bologna, manuscript, Bologna, Biblioteca Comunale, MS. B.104, ca. 1760-80, foglio 29, “Un piccolo Quadretto con un S. Girolamo, tiene in mano un teschio di morte, da un piede il Leone, e due Angioletti in aria, quasi simile a quello di Lodovico, in S. Martino, è delli Carracci,” as in the Palazzo Sampieri Senatorio dalla Mercanzia.

1783 Inventory of the Palazzo Sampieri Senatorio, Biblioteca Comunale dell’Archiginnasio di Bologna, fondo speciale Talon Sampieri, B 344, fasc. 132, “Inventario e stima de quadri esistenti nella casa senatoria Sampieri, stimate dal signor Pedrini,” c. 3v. “Due quad: piccoli un rap: S. Girolamo, e l’altro S. Franco: di Lodovico Caracci, con cornice intagl: e dorato.”

Hermann Voss, “Quellenforschung und Stilkritik: Eine Praktische Methodik mit Beispielen aus der Spätitalienischen Malerei,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, vol. 2, no. 3 (1933), pp. 191-192, fig. 8, as Ludovico Carracci.

Italienische Malerei des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts: Katalog der von der Stadt Wiesbaden und dem Nassauischen Kunstverein Veranstalteten Ausstellung, Wiesbaden, 1935, p. 8, cat. no. 54, as Ludovico Carracci.

“Auflösung der Galerie Stern,” Internationale Sammler-Zeitung, no. 19 (1 December 1937), p. 205, as sold for 4800 Reichsmark.

Die Weltkunst, vol. 11, no. 42/43 (24 October 1937), p. 5.

Die Weltkunst, vol. 11, no. 46 (21 November 1937), p. 6.

Heinrich Bodmer, Lodovico Carracci, Burg bei Magdeburg, 1939, p. 142, as attributed to Ludovico by Hermann Voss.

Gail Feigenbaum, Lodovico Carracci, A Study of His Later Career and a Catalogue of his Paintings, PhD dissertation, Princeton University, 1984, pp. 255-256, cat. no. 37, fig. 54, in catalogue A, as Ludovico Carracci.

Emilia Calbi and Daniela Scaglietti Kelescian, Marcello Oretti e il Patrimonio Artistico Privato Bolognese: Bologna, Biblioteca Comunale, MS. B.104, Bologna, 1984, p. 59.

Alessandro Brogi, “Il fregio dei Carracci con “Storie di Romolo e Remo” nel salone di palazzo Magnani,” in Il Credito Romagnolo fra storia, arte e tradizione, Bologna, 1985, p. 246, as Ludovico Carracci.

Giovanna Perini “‘L’uom più grande in pittura che abbia avuto Bologna’ – L’alterna fortuna critica e figurative di Ludovico Carracci,” in Ludovico Carracci, ed. Andrea Emiliani, Milan, 1993, pp. 315-316, footnote 287; Appendix 2: “Elenco Sommario delle Stampe da Ludovico Carracci,” p. 341, no. 38, as Ludovico Carracci.

Catherine MacKenzie, ed., Auktion 392: Reclaiming the Galerie Stern, Düsseldorf, exhibition catalogue, Montréal, Faculty of Fine Art Gallery, Concordia University; New York, Leo Baeck Institute; London, Ben Uri Gallery; Jerusalem, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 20 October 2006-31 August 2008, pp. 17, 50, no. 185.

Laurence Kanter and John Marciari, Italian Paintings from the Richard L. Feigen Collection, New Haven, 2010, p. 130, footnote 5, as Ludovico Carracci.

Giovanna Perini Folesani, “Riflessioni baroccesche tra Bologna e Urbino,” in Barocci in Bottega, ed. Bonita Cleri (Urbino, 2012), Macerata, 2013, p. 39, footnote 104, as Ludovico Carracci.

Sara Angel, “The Secret Life of Max Stern,” The Walrus (15 October 2014).

Alessandro Brogi, Ludovico Carracci (1555-1619), Bologna, 2001, vol. 1, pp. 271-273, cat. no. R51, under rejected attributions; and vol. 2, fig. 291, as Bolognese painter, second half of the seventeenth century; p. 298, cat. no. P103, the Saint Jerome in the Desert documented in the Palazzo Sampieri listed under lost or dispersed works.

Giovanna Perini Folesani, Sir Joshua Reynolds in Italia (1850-1752): Passaggio in Toscana, Il taccuino 201 a 10 del British Museum, Florence, 2012, pp. 90-91, footnote 196, as Ludovico Carracci.

Alessandro Brogi, Ludovico Carracci: Addenda, Bologna, 2016, pp. 116, 118-120, footnotes 178, 184-185, fig. 146, as “after Ludovico Carracci (?),” a copy after the lost original by Ludovico Carracci in the Sampieri collection.

Christie’s, New York, Property from the Collection of Richard L. Feigen, 1 May 2019, under lot 26, as Ludovico Carracci.

Giovanna Perini Folesani, Sir Joshua Reynolds in Italia - Il soggiorno romano - I - il taccuino di Plymouth, Florence, forthcoming, as Ludovico Carracci.

Description

With its dynamic composition and jewel-like refinement, this devotional work is a prime example of the small-scale paintings executed by Ludovico Carracci, the preeminent painter in late sixteenth-century Bologna. Along with his younger cousins Agostino and Annibale, Ludovico helped introduce a new naturalism to contemporary painting as head of the family’s Accademia degli Incamminati—literally “the academy of the progressives.” The artistic reform ushered in by the Carracci was a watershed moment in the history of painting in Italy, effectively putting an end to the dominant Mannerist style and making way for the Baroque. With its earthy tones, graceful forms, and dramatic lighting effects, the present work exemplifies the mature style that was emulated by Ludovico’s pupils, chief among them, Guercino. In fact, the art historian and former owner of the painting, Hermann Voss, once cited our Saint Jerome as “proof of the influence that Ludovico had over Guercino.” Ludovico’s style moved in a different direction later in his career, his works characterized by their monumentality and eccentricity. However, it was the earlier, small devotional and cabinet paintings like this one that exerted the greatest influence on the next several generation of Bolognese painters.

Saint Jerome was an early Christian priest and theologian, best known for his Latin translation of the Bible, the Vulgate. He spent several years as a penitent hermit in the Syrian desert—which is how he is depicted here, naked and covered only by dark blue drapery that billows over his legs onto the rocky earth. At his feet rests a lion, his legendary companion tamed after he healed its injured paw. The saint is shown receiving divine inspiration through the agency of two putti floating above a dark cloud at the upper left. He turns to them and away from the skull, the traditional symbol of the transience of human life, and the book, an allusion to his celebrated translation. Ludovico has masterfully created gentle torsion in the saint’s uncovered body as he reaches towards the right edge of the painting while turning his head left to witness the heavenly apparition (Fig. 1). A swathe of bright blue sky and distant landscape cuts diagonally across the composition, creating both a dramatic abstract division between the divine and the earthly, and a vector that connects the saint and his visitants.

Our Saint Jerome was first published in 1933 by Hermann Voss, who attributed the painting to Ludovico in part on the basis of a print signed Wandutius Aurifex that recorded the composition and attributed its design to the artist (Fig. 2). The composition of the painting is also recorded in a second engraving (Fig. 3), possibly by the Bolognese artist Ludovico Mattioli, which is similarly executed in reverse orientation to the present work. As Voss and several subsequent scholars have noted, the pose of Saint Jerome is strikingly similar to that of the angel in the upper right of Ludovico’s 1594 Vision of Saint Hyacinth in the Louvre (Fig. 4). Alessandro Brogi has questioned Ludovico’s authorship of this composition based on this resemblance, claiming that the artist never repeated the pose of a figure in two of his works. However, Babette Bohn has noted that in the period of 1594–1598 Ludovico “particularly favor[ed] arms and/or legs traversing the body, as Jerome’s right arm does here.” Ludovico frequently employed this motif in both paintings and drawings in these years, and the position of Jerome in the present work is especially close to that of his counterpart in his study for the Angel Warning Saint Joseph to Flee to Egypt of ca. 1595–1596 (Fig. 5). A date for the present painting around 1594–1598 seems particularly appropriate, as this is also the period in which Ludovico executed his grand altarpiece of Saint Jerome for the church of San Martino in Bologna.

In her 1984 dissertation on Ludovico Carracci, Gail Feigenbaum associated our Saint Jerome with paintings described in two eighteenth-century collection inventories. The 1701 inventory of the collection of Louis Bauyn, Seigneur de Cormery, lists: “a painting on wood, fourteen poulces high by six poulces wide, with a gold frame, representing St. Jerome, with a skull and a book under his hand, a lion at his feet, and two small angels up above, all in a landscape, painted by Ludovico Carracci.” Additionally, in the late-eighteenth century the Bolognese nobleman and cataloguer Marcello Oretti recorded in his list of works in the Sampieri collection “a small painting with a Saint Jerome who holds a skull in his hand with a lion at his feet with two small angels in the air, similar to that by Ludovico in San Martino, it is by the Carracci.” Scholars have rightly noted that our Saint Jerome could not be the one from the collection of Louis Bauyn, as that work is described as painted on panel. However, there is general agreement that the painting recorded by Marcello Oretti in the Sampieri collection was the original autograph painting of the composition by Ludovico, on which the prints discussed above are based.

The Sampieri possessed one of the most celebrated collections in Bologna. The paintings were displayed in the quadreria (paintings gallery) on the ground floor of the family’s palazzo on the Strada Maggiore (no. 244, today no. 24), which was decorated with frescoes by Ludovico, Agostino, and Annibale Carracci. The fame of the quadreria Sampieri stretched far beyond Bologna, and it was a popular destination for locals and visitors to the city, especially artists. Sir Joshua Reynolds, a great admirer of Ludovico Carracci, made a drawing after our Saint Jerome in a sketchbook that he used to record details and entire compositions of paintings that he encountered on his journey through Italy between 1751–1752 (Fig. 6). This sketch, which must have been executed during Reynolds’ visit to Bologna in July 1752, faithfully reproduces the seated saint and the two angels above him. Several weak copies after the present painting, all similar in scale, are also known. The existence of these copies may be explained by the fact that works in the Sampieri collection—including Annibale Carracci’s Burial of Christ in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Virgin and Child with Saint Lucy formerly in the Richard L. Feigen collection—were easily accessible and frequently copied by artists.

It is not known when the Saint Jerome by Ludovico Carracci entered the
Sampieri collection. However, it is conceivable that the painting might have been commissioned by Abbate Astorre di Vincenzo Sampieri, an important early patron of the Carracci. Interestingly, it has not been previously recognized in the literature that Marcello Oretti records our Saint Jerome in the Palazzo Sampieri Senatorio (73 Via Santo Stefano, near the Loggia dei Mercanti or Palazzo della Mercanzia), rather than in the main Sampieri palazzo on the Strada Maggiore that was home to the famous quadreria. The painting was later listed in the 1783 inventory of the Palazzo Sampieri Senatorio, which explains why the Saint Jerome does not appear in any of the eighteenth century inventories of the Palazzo Sampieri on the Strada Maggiore, nor in any written descriptions of the quadreria. While it is possible that our Saint Jerome was in the Sampieri palazzo on the Strada Maggiore at an earlier date, it must have been in the Palazzo Senatorio that Sir Joshua Reynolds, and possibly also the engravers and the copyists, encountered this work.

Luigi Sampieri was the proprietor of the Palazzo Sampieri Senatorio in the late eighteenth century. Following the death of the heirless Padre Ferdinando Francesco Sampieri, the last living member of the main branch of the Sampieri family, Luigi inherited the Strada Maggiore palace and the collection of paintings it contained in 1787. The documents attest that some (but not all) of the pictures from the collection at the Palazzo Senatorio were at this point brought to the quadreria on the Strada Maggiore. This includes Francesco Francia’s Virgin and Child with Saints Dominic and Barbara in The Morgan Library and Museum, here newly identified as originating from the Sampieri collection. However, our Saint Jerome was not among the works transferred to the quadreria. It must have remained in the collection at the Palazzo Senatorio, but unfortunately it has not yet been possible to determine when our painting left the Palazzo Senatorio or when it was sold by the Sampieri.

The attribution of our Saint Jerome to Ludovico Carracci and its identification as the original work in the Sampieri collection has been accepted by art historians both before and after the painting’s reemergence in 2000. In addition to those scholars cited in the literature (Voss, Perini, and Feigenbaum), the painting has recently been studied firsthand by Laurence Kanter, John Marciari, and Babette Bohn—all of whom have endorsed Ludovico’s authorship of the present painting. Dr. Bohn has commented: “The composition of the picture (with little middle-ground transition from near to far), the complex pose of Saint Jerome, with head, right arm, and legs all oriented in various directions to create a dynamic resolution for the figure that expresses his spiritual excitement, and above all the wonderfully expressive head of Saint Jerome, all confirm the autograph status of the picture around 1594–1598” (written communication, 6 October 2019). She notes as well the relationship of the present painting with Ludovico’s Saint Hyacinth in the Louvre and Ludovico’s drawings from these years. However, Alessandro Brogi, who had previously accepted the painting as by Ludovico but knows the painting only through photographs, has called into question the authorship of the painting and suggested that it is an old copy of the painting from the Sampieri collection, which he considers lost.

Provenance Notes

Our Saint Jerome was first published in 1933 by Hermann Voss, one of the most prominent German art historians of the twentieth century. In his publication, Voss reported that the Saint Jerome was in a private collection in Berlin and that it had previously been in a private collection in England where it was considered the work of Guercino. It has gone unnoticed in the scholarly literature on Ludovico Carracci, as well as on Hermann Voss’s collecting activities, that Voss was then the owner of the painting. After having worked for nearly a decade as a curator at the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, Voss departed Berlin for London in 1933 in search of new career opportunities, bringing his personal library and paintings collection with him. However, his application for a British visa was denied in 1934 on the grounds that he was not suffering religious, racial or political persecution, and he returned to Germany, taking up a position as the director of the Nassauisches Landesmuseum in Wiesbaden.

Voss lent the Saint Jerome, along with several other works from his personal collection, to the exhibition of seventeenth and eighteenth century Italian paintings that he organized at the museum in Wiesbaden in 1935. It was also on long-term loan to the museum and on view in the permanent collection. The Saint Jerome was likely in Voss’s possession by the time of his 1933 article, but he is known to have avoided publicizing the fact that he personally owned some of the paintings that he published and exhibited throughout his life. Furthermore, given that Voss was in England in 1933, it is probable that he acquired the work during his brief tenure there. However, it is still not known from whom he acquired it. Given that Voss notes that the painting was previously in an English private collection, it is possible that he could have acquired it directly from the previous owner or through a dealer.

Voss sold the Saint Jerome along with a landscape by Laurent de La Hire to the Galerie Stern in exchange for Das Mädchen aus der Fremde by Josef Anton Koch in February 1937. The Düsseldorf-based art dealer Leo Pauly acted as Voss’s agent or intermediary in the exchange, and it is not clear if Max Stern knew that the Saint Jerome was coming from Voss’s personal collection. Voss’s acquisition of Koch’s Das Mädchen aus der Fremde has been discussed by Kathrin Iselt, who noted that “it is not known at what price and when exactly Voss acquired the [Koch] painting from Max Stern.” This previously unknown transaction finally clarifies the circumstances of how Voss acquired Das Mädchen aus der Fremde and how this painting by Ludovico Carracci arrived at the Galerie Stern.

The Galerie Stern was established in 1913 by the German-Jewish art dealer Julius Stern and rose to prominence as one of the leading galleries in the city, specializing in paintings by established artists of the Düsseldorf school, nineteenth century German works, and Old Masters. Julius’s son Max Stern joined the gallery in 1928 after completing his PhD in art history. Over the course of the following decade, the Galerie Stern suffered great difficulties brought on first by the global economic downturn and later by the rise of Nazism in Germany. As a result of the Great Depression, the Galerie Stern, like many other art galleries, began to hold auctions, operating as the Kunstauktionshaus Stern between 1931 and 1933. However, this activity came to a halt in 1933 after Adolf Hitler rose to power as chancellor of Germany. The gallery was subjected to a new regulation that prevented Jews from conducting public auctions. From this point, the Galerie Stern focused on mounting large exhibitions at the gallery, which in reality were nothing more than auctions in disguise. During this period, Max Stern took over management of the gallery and subsequently inherited it after the death of his father in October 1934. Not long thereafter, the Galerie’s activity was again halted by the Nazi authorities. Max Stern was notified in August 1935 by the President of the RKdbK (the Reichskammer der Bildenden Künste, or Reich Chamber for the Fine Arts) that he could no longer continue his profession as an art dealer due to his “race.” Max appealed this decision and fought several subsequent orders to sell or dissolve the Galerie Stern. However, on 13 September 1937 Max received a final letter stating that no further appeals would be considered. He was given until 15 December of that year to liquidate the gallery’s holdings and to cease operation, which resulted in the stock of the gallery being offered at a forced auction at Lempertz in Cologne on 13 November 1937.

The Saint Jerome came into Max Stern’s possession not long before the forced sale of the Galerie Stern at Lempertz. The importance of the Saint Jerome was clearly recognized by Stern, who acquired it for his gallery’s stock despite already being under intense pressure from the Nazis to close his business, as well as by the organizers of the auction at Lempertz in the period leading up to the sale. The entry on the painting in the auction catalogue included a long quotation from Hermann Voss’s 1933 article and reported that the painting had been on loan to the museum in Wiesbaden. In addition to being featured as the first lot offered in the section of ‘Alte Meister’ paintings in the Lempertz sale, the Saint Jerome was listed among the paintings on offer in the advertisements for the highly publicized auction (Fig. 7). The painting made the second highest price of all of the “Alte Meister” paintings in the sale at 4800 Reichsmark, surpassed only by the Philips Wouwerman, which sold for 5000.

As with nearly all of the works from the Galerie Stern forcibly sold at Lempertz in 1937, excepting Winterhalter’s Girl from the Sabine Hills, the identity of the buyer of the Saint Jerome at the sale is unknown. Although the prices paid for the paintings at the Stern sale were reported in Die Weltkunst and the Internationale Sammler-Zeitung in 1937, these publications do not record the names of the buyers. Additionally, Lempertz’s auction records were destroyed during the bombing of Cologne in 1943, making it impossible to identify the buyers at the sale.

When the Saint Jerome reappeared at auction at Lempertz in May 2000, it was listed as having been in a private collection in the Rhineland following the 1937 sale, and then in a private collection in Zürich, likely the consignor of the painting to the 2000 sale. The painting was there purchased by the New York dealer and collector Richard L. Feigen for his personal collection. The Saint Jerome was originally slated to be included in the exhibition of Italian paintings from his collection at the Yale University Art Gallery in 2010. However, shortly before the exhibition Feigen learned of the circumstances of the 1937 Galerie Stern auction and voluntarily returned the Saint Jerome to the Dr. and Mrs. Max Stern Foundation. The exhibition catalogue thus only briefly mentioned the Saint Jerome (with an attribution to Ludovico Carracci in full).

Max Stern was able to leave Germany in 1937, first traveling to London, where he was interned in 1940 on the Isle of Man as an enemy alien; then to Canada, where internment greeted him as well, although he was released in 1941. He moved to Montreal and was able to find work at the newly-established Dominion Gallery. There, having acquired a passionate interest in contemporary Canadian artists to complement his knowledge of European painting, he flourished. Over the years he became a partner in the gallery and eventually came to own it (Fig. 10). His distinguished career as an art dealer in Canada could only partially compensate for the dire situation that forced him to leave his native country. Stern never stopped seeking the return of paintings that he had been forced to abandon or sell at auction in Germany.

Ludovico Carracci’s Saint Jerome is now being sold for the benefit of the Max Stern Art Restitution Project, to further the recovery of works expropriated from Max Stern and to support related research and educational programs.

Robert Simon Fine Art

About this Artwork

Description

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