Saint Jerome in a Case (Antonello da Messina)
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| St. Jerome in the case |
|---|
| Antonello da Messina , 1474 |
| Oil on wood |
| 46 × 36.5 cm |
| National Gallery (London) |
St. Jerome in the case (also: St. Jerome in the case ) is a painting by Antonello da Messina . It was created in the second half of the 15th century. The picture is one of the first paintings in Italian painting, which was created using the technique of oil painting .
Art historical background
The hitherto applied in Italian painting tempera could not reach the precision and the splendor of the oil technique already adopted by Dutch painters. Antonello probably took over this technique from the Dutchman Petrus Christ during a stay in Milan in 1456 . Giorgio Vasari had written that Antonello had been to Flanders and had become a friend of Jan van Eyck there . This representation has meanwhile been rejected as unlikely by recent research. Antonello was the first to introduce the technology in Venice and trained his students and colleagues in it.
The representation
The template for this painting could be the image of St. Jerome of his teacher Colantonio del Fiore , who created it between 1445 and 1450 in Naples . According to legend, the saint pulled a thorn out of a lion's paw, which is said to have always accompanied him tame. In his painting Colantonio also depicts the saint in a writing room at the moment when he frees the lion from the thorn.
Antonello, on the other hand, gives no space to this scene. His Hieronymus is depicted in the style of an educated humanist . The lion is also present as one of his attributes , but is in the shadows (right half of the picture under the round vault). The second attribute, the cardinal's hat , lies on a bench behind the reading saint.
The picture opens by looking into a carefully depicted stone portal. Antonello is likely to have adopted this method of creating depth effects from Dutch painting, where it had been used for a long time.
The perspective representation of the floor tiles with their “virtuoso” shadow effects is also reminiscent of Dutch technology . The lighting in the picture is unusual. At the same time, light falls on the portal from the front, as well as from the back through the windows and "from below" to illuminate the vaults; it too is based on examples from Dutch models. This led to the picture being ascribed to Hans Memling for a while .
The vaults, which are so unusually illuminated, are said to have been designed according to southern Italian models.
There are also two herb pots missing. Herbal representations have a certain tradition in Renaissance painting, recognizable, for example, in the picture The Dream of St. Ursula by Vittore Carpaccio , created in 1495.
Numerous small details, such as the cat or the peacock, symbolize the incorruptibility of the flesh through the participation of people in the Eucharist on the portal, give the picture its "unique atmosphere".
aftermath
Antonellos da Messina's painting, especially the new technique, was adopted quite quickly. His most famous immediate successor was Alvise Vivarini , a little later and in interaction with him, Giovanni Bellini . Vivarini, for his part, prepared the later “triumphal procession” of Venetian painting, for example with the artists Tizian , Giorgione and Palma Vecchio . Ultimately, it can be said that Antonello's painting may have had a strong influence on all subsequent Venetian artists.
literature
- Will Durant: Splendor and decay of the Italian Renaissance (= cultural history of mankind. Vol. 8). Südwest Verlag, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-517-00562-2 .
- Hugh Honor: Venice. A guide. 2nd Edition. Prestel, Munich 1973, ISBN 3-7913-0285-X .
- Corrado Ricci: History of Art in Northern Italy. 2nd Edition. Julius Hoffmann Verlag, Stuttgart 1924.
- Max Semrau : The art of the Renaissance in Italy and in the north (= Wilhelm Lübke : Grundriss der Kunstgeschichte. Vol. 3). 3rd (of the complete work 14th) edition. Paul Neff, Esslingen 1912.
- Herbert Alexander Stützer: Painting of the Italian Renaissance (= DuMont's library of great painters ). DuMont, Cologne 1979, ISBN 3-7701-1118-4 .
- Rolf Toman (ed.): The art of the Italian Renaissance. Architecture, sculpture, painting, drawing. Special edition. Ullmann, Königswinter 2007, ISBN 978-3-8331-4582-7 .
- Stefano Zuffi: The Renaissance. Art, architecture, history, masterpieces. DuMont, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-8321-9113-9 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Toman (ed.): The art of the Italian Renaissance. 2007, p. 361.
- ↑ Semrau: The Art of the Renaissance. 1912, p. 237.
- ↑ Durant: Splendor and Decay of the Italian Renaissance. 1978, p. 61.
- ^ Zuffi: The Renaissance. 2008, p. 153.
- ↑ a b c d e f Zuffi: The Renaissance. 2008, p. 136f.
- ^ Stützer: Painting of the Italian Renaissance. 1979, pp. 138f.
- ↑ Honor: Venice. A guide. 1973, p. 356.
- ↑ Semrau: The Art of the Renaissance. 1912, p. 237.
- ↑ Semrau: The Art of the Renaissance. 1912, p. 238.
- ^ Ricci: History of Art in Northern Italy. 1924, p. 55.
- ↑ Honor: Venice. A guide. 1973, p. 150.