A Miracle of Saint Benedict

c. 1480

Two scenes showing monks wearing black hoods and robes take place on this vertical panel painting. The left half is framed by a white stone arch supported on a pillar, which runs down the middle of the composition. Under the arch, a clean-shaven man sits with his body angled to our right. A book is open on his lap, and he holds up his left hand, to our right. He braces a gold-tipped long staff with his other hand, and a gold halo frames his lined face. His hood is down, and he wears a tall, brimless black cap. He sits in a room with a wood floor, wood ceiling, and a bench under an open window on the far wall. The shutters are pulled back to show a continuation of the background landscape on the right half. There, one monk holds another, who is smaller in scale, around the chest as the latter floats or stands in a white body of water. The person in the water holds a bucket limply by his side and looks at us. The water winds back to low, green hills and a pink stone building with white trim along the right edge of the painting. A church with ivory-white walls and a slate-blue roof is situated slightly farther back, and it continues to be visible through the windows. The narrow strip of white sky in the top right corner of the painting is lined along the top edge with aquamarine blue.

Media Options

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On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 41

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on oak

  • Credit Line

    Samuel H. Kress Collection

  • Dimensions

    painted surface: 91.5 x 78 cm (36 x 30 11/16 in.)
    original panel: 94 x 79.4 cm (37 x 31 1/4 in.)
    framed: 109.5 x 95.7 x 7.6 cm (43 1/8 x 37 11/16 x 3 in.)

  • Accession

    1952.5.45

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Eugene Leopold Garbaty [1885-1966], Berlin and New York, by 1931;[1] (Paul Drey, New York); sold 1948 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[2] gift 1952 to NGA.
[1] Neither Friedrich Winkler's certificate of 6 February 1931 (Kress collection records in NGA curatorial files) nor Winkler, "Simon Marmion," Pantheon 13 (1934): 70, identifies or locates the painting's owner. However, Grete Ring, A Century of French Painting 1400-1500, London, 1949: 222, no. 193 (who was apparently unaware of the 1948 sale to the Kress Foundation), gives the owner as Garbaty in New York and indicates that the collection was once in Berlin, so it is likely Garbaty was also the owner in the 1930s. His collection was probably housed at the Schloss Altdöbern, a property south of Berlin owned before World War II by the family. According to his obituary (New York Times, 8 September 1966: 47), Garbaty developed one of the leading tobacco businesses in Germany and was an art collector before his Jewish family was forced to flee the country in 1938/1939. He brought some of the collection with him. He lent several paintings to the art exhibition at the 1939 New York World's Fair (and its subsequent U.S. tour), and the dealer Georges Seligmann listed more than a dozen paintings (including A Miracle of Saint Benedict) in a January 1945 report on Garbaty's collection (Smithsonian Institution, Archives of American Art, Seligmann Papers, box 247, copy in NGA curatorial files).
[2] See The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/63.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1939

  • Masterpieces of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture from 1300-1800, New York World's Fair, May-October 1939, no. 236a, repro., as St. Benedict, St. Maurus, and St. Placidus by Simon Marmion.

  • Masterpieces of Art from Foreign Collections: European Paintings from the New York and San Francisco World's Fairs, The Detroit Institute of Art, November-December 1939, no. 29, repro., as St. Benedict, St. Maurus and St. Placidus by Simon Marmion.

  • Seven Centuries of Painting: A Loan Exhibition of Old and Modern Masters, Calif. Palace of the Legion of Honor and the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, 1939-1940, no. L-10, as St. Benedict, St. Maurus and St. Placidus by Simon Marmion.

1940

  • Masterpieces of Art from the New York and San Francisco World's Fairs, The Cleveland Museum of Art, February-March 1940, no. 48, as St. Benedict, St. Maurus, and St. Placidus by Simon Marmion.

  • Masterpieces of Art: European Paintings from the New York World's Fair and the Golden Gate International Exposition, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh; City Art Museum, St. Louis, March-May 1940, no. 11, as by Simon Marmion.

1947

  • A Loan Exhibition of Fifty Painters of Architecture, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, 1947, no. 30, pl. IV, as St. Benedict, St. Maurus and St. Placidus by Simon Marmion.

1948

  • Early Flemish Painting exhibited to accompany the lectures of Erwin Panofsky, Fogg Museum of Art, Cambridge, 1948, no cat.

Bibliography

1934

  • Winkler, Friedrich. "Simon Marmion." Pantheon (March 1934): 65, 70, repro.

1949

  • Ring, Grete. A Century of French Painting 1400-1500. London, 1949: 222, no. 193.

1951

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection Acquired by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation 1945-1951. Introduction by John Walker, text by William E. Suida. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1951: 176, no. 77, repro.

1958

  • Hoffman, Edith M. "Simon Marmion." Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 1958: 199, no. 17.

1959

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 330, repro.

1965

  • Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 83.

1968

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 73, repro.

1975

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 216, repro.

1977

  • Eisler, Colin. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian. Oxford, 1977: 238-239, fig. 228.

1985

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 250, repro.

1992

  • Ainsworth, Maryan W. "New Observations on the Working Technique in Simon Marmion's Panel Paintings." In Thomas Kren, ed. Margaret of York, Simon Marmion, and the Visions of Tondal. Malibu, 1992: 254.

2009

  • Conisbee, Philip, et al. French Paintings of the Fifteenth through the Eighteenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 2009: no. 43, 209-212, color repro.

Wikidata ID

Q20174316

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