Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo

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Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo: Portrait of a Man in Armor (allegedly: Gaston de Foix or Self-Portrait  ?), Around 1529, Louvre , Paris

Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo (also Girolamo da Brescia ; first name also Gerolamo ; * around 1480 in Brescia , † after 1548 in Venice ) was an Italian painter .

Life

Savoldo's date of birth is unknown. A document from 1508 shows that his father was called Jacopo and his grandfather Piero " de Savoldis de Brescia ". His origins from Brescia are also confirmed by the fact that he called himself “ Brixiensis ” or “ de Brisia ” on some signed works .

His education is also in the dark, but there are some indications that he continued his education while traveling at a young age. There is evidence that he lived in Parma in October 1506 as a guest of the painter Alessandro Araldi; Savoldo was already referred to as " magistro " (master). Strangely enough, on December 2, 1508, he enrolled in the Association of Doctors and Pharmacists in Florence . How long he stayed in Tuscany is not known, but on February 2, 1515 he was at the ducal court of Alfonso I d'Este in Ferrara , where he was paid for some pictures. There are no clearly dated or datable works from his early period.

Adoration of the Shepherds , Galleria Sabauda , Turin

From 1521 at the latest he was in Venice , where he spent almost his entire subsequent life. From there he was called to Treviso in the same year to complete a painting for the main altar in the Dominican church of San Nicolò that had been begun by the Venetian painter Fra Marco Pensaben - a Bellini epigone.

Savoldo's next clearly datable work is the monumental altarpiece of the Madonna in Glory with four saints , which he painted 1524-25 for the Church of San Domenico in Pesaro (today: Pinacoteca di Brera , Milan). When the contract was signed with the Dominicans, the architect Sebastiano Serlio acted as a witness, and Savoldo also created an unspecified Pietà for the monks.

From Savoldo's will of October 17, 1526 it emerges that he was married to a Maria from Flanders, who had a daughter Elisabetta from a previous marriage, who in turn had two daughters.

Among his customers in the 1520s were Francesco Giglio and Andrea Odoni (who also patronized Lorenzo Lotto ), and from November 1527 he created a not clearly identifiable Saint Jerome for the noble Gian Paolo Averoldi from Brescia . Also in 1527 Pietro di Gianruggero Contarini had a will decree that his (no longer existing) chapel in the Venetian church Santi Apostoli should be adorned with four paintings by Savoldo on the subject of the flight into Egypt . Several versions of the painter's rest on the run have been preserved, but it is not certain which of them was intended for Contarini (possibly a picture in the Collezione Castelbarco Albani, Milan ).

Young man with a flute , around 1525, Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo , Brescia

One of the most famous works by Savoldo from the mid-1520s is his Young Man with Flute ( Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo , Brescia). In this picture the musician plays a piece by the Paduan composer Francesco Santacroce , whose text is about love and death (“ dialogo tra Amore e morte ”). Savoldo also painted a few other pictures of flutists: on a picture from 1529, now lost, which was in the collection of Antonio Ruffo in Messina in the 17th century , the musician played an ave maris stella . A shepherd with a flute was created around 1540 ( Getty Museum , Los Angeles ).

Savoldo's famous portrait of a man in armor in the Louvre (Paris; fig. Above) has in the past been interpreted either as a portrait of Gaston de Foix or as a self-portrait ; neither has been proven. The picture reveals a clear influence of Giorgione and is a virtuoso illusionistic play with light and shadow: through the mirrors shown in the picture, the man (and various objects) can be seen from different angles, sometimes almost distorted, and there are also reflective effects his armor , which Giorgione or Tizian liked to paint. The painting can be understood as a plea by Savoldo for painting in the discussion of the time about the primacy of sculpture or painting (the so-called “ paragone delle arti ”).

He received his first known public commission in Venice in 1530 when he decorated the chapel of Antonio Caresini in San Domenico di Castello . The resulting Annunciation is now in the Venice Accademia . A dated work of this phase is the Madonna in Glorie with four saints, completed in 1533 for the Della Torre family in the church of Santa Maria in Organo in Verona .

Another well-known work by Savoldo is his Transfiguration of Christ (or Tranfiguration ) in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence ; a more monumental variant of this is now in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan. The four famous versions of Mary Magdalene at the Tomb of Christ were probably made in the 1530s , including one each in the National Gallery in London and in the Getty Center in Los Angeles (see below).

St. Matthew with the Angel , 1530, Metropolitan Museum , New York

In June 1534 Savoldo was called to Milan to the court of Francesco II Sforza . During this time four "very beautiful night and fire pieces" (" quattro quadri di notte e di fuochi, molti belli " ) mentioned by Vasari (1568) were probably created , which were once in the Zecca of Milan, but are not clearly identified . But the duke died in November 1535 and it is believed that Savoldo returned to Venice soon afterwards, where he can be proven again in June 1537.

Savoldo's last works, which can be classified chronologically with certainty, are two versions of the Adoration of the Shepherds from 1540 for the Venetian church of San Giobbe (today Museo Diocesano, Venice) and for San Barnaba in Brescia (today Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo , Brescia).

It is not known when Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo died, but he was last mentioned in documents in 1548.

In the same year his student Paolo Pino regretted in his Dialogo di pittura that Savoldo was treated unfairly and neglected by fate (“ matrignati dalla sorte ”) and that his contemporaries did not respect him as he deserved it (“ poco pregio del nome suo "). Similarly, Pietro Aretino wrote in December 1548 in a letter to one of Savoldo's pupils that he wished him a reputation for the future that would be more appropriate to his merits.

Appreciation

Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo is counted together with Romanino and Moretto da Brescia to the Veneto-Lombard school of the Brescia , which at the time was under Venetian rule . His work shows influences from the Venetians Giovanni Bellini , Giorgione and Tizian , but also from German ( Dürer et al.) And Dutch painting. He was a very independent artist who showed great interest in the effects of the chiaroscuro and sometimes also in details of the material. His works show a strict spatial construction and strong realism with effective use of light - which underlines forms and expression. Between 1520 and 1530 he created his most beautiful portraits and genre pictures - in addition to sacred works .

Like Titian, Savoldo remained unaffected by Mannerism in his later work .

Because of his penchant for nocturnal plays and his play with light and shadow, Savoldo is sometimes viewed as a forerunner of Caravaggio , whose blatant, hard and sometimes ugly naturalism , however, was alien to him.

Picture gallery

Works (selection)

The following list of works does not claim to be complete. Few of Savoldo's works are dated; the order follows Francesco Frangi's ideas of a chronological arrangement.

literature

  • Savoldo, Giovanni Girolamo (also Girolamo da Brescia) , in: Lexikon der Kunst , Vol. 10, Karl Müller Verlag, Erlangen, 1994, p. 277
  • Francesco Frangi: Savoldo, Giovanni Girolamo , in: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani , Volume 91, 2018, online on “Treccani” (Italian; viewed May 17, 2020)

Web links

Commons : Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Savoldo, Giovanni Girolamo (also Girolamo da Brescia) , in: Lexikon der Kunst , Vol. 10, Karl Müller Verlag, Erlangen, 1994, p. 277
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa from Francesco Frangi: Savoldo, Giovanni Girolamo , in: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani , Volume 91, 2018, online on "Treccani" (Italian; seen May 17, 2020)
  3. ↑ a b Lawrence Gowing: Die Gemäldesammlung des Louvre, Dumont, Cologne, 1988/2001, p. 254
  4. ↑ Thorsten Droste: Venice: The city in the lagoon - churches and palaces, gondolas and carnivals (art guide), Dumont, Cologne, 1996, pp. 296-297
  5. ↑ Savoldo, Giovanni Girolamo (also Girolamo da Brescia) , in: Lexikon der Kunst , Vol. 10, Karl Müller Verlag, Erlangen, 1994, p. 277
personal data
SURNAME Savoldo, Giovanni Girolamo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Girolamo da Brescia; Savoldo, Giovanni Gerolamo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian painter
DATE OF BIRTH around 1480
PLACE OF BIRTH Brescia
DATE OF DEATH after 1548
Place of death Venice