Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo

Brescian, c. 1480 - 1548 or after

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Shown from the waist up, four people surround a nude infant boy in this nighttime horizontal painting. All the people have pale skin. The pudgy baby has short brown hair and lies on a white cloth, holding the end of a translucent yellow cloth with one chubby hand. The largest person is Mary, who stands just right of center. Her hair is covered by a sheer white cloth, and she wears a lapis-blue robe over a muted rose-pink, long-sleeved dress. She holds her fingertips together over the child as she looks down at him. Two bearded men with gray hair stand to our left of Mary. The leftmost man faces our right in profile. He holds both hands up, palms out and fingers loosely curled toward the child. He wears a soft red cloak over a pale yellow garment. He and the man next to him look down at the baby. That second man holds one hand to his chest over a pale gray cloak, and the rest of his body is lost in shadow. The final person is a clean-shaven man to the right. He tips his head up and holds his hands together in prayer. He wears an olive-green jacket over a white shirt. This person tilts his head back with lips parted and eyes lifted so he looks up and to our left. The background is dark and includes what appears to be a stone building with arched windows. In the deep distance in the upper right corner of the painting, three small people are illuminated by a glow of golden and coral-red light breaking through a bank of dark clouds. A winged angel hovers in the light.
Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo, The Adoration of the Shepherds, 1530s, oil on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.86

The Adoration of the Shepherds

Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo · 1530s · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1961.9.86

Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo, Portrait of a Knight, c. 1525, oil on canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1952.5.74

Portrait of a Knight

Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo · c. 1525 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1952.5.74

Close to us, a bearded man with pale, peachy skin sits against a tall, narrow rock formation against a deep landscape in this vertical painting. The man has gray hair, deep-set eyes, high cheekbones, and his lips are downturned in his long beard. He sits with his knees and body angled to our left, but he turns to look up and to our right at a raven perched on the stone. His right elbow, to our left, is propped on a rocky ledge, and his head rests in that hand. His other veined, large hand rests on his knee. He wears a voluminous, long-sleeved, aquamarine-blue robe under a cloth tied around his neck. The cloth is rose-pink on the outside and appears to be lined with fleece on the underside. Near the top right corner of the composition, the raven leans toward the man holding a roll in its beak. The man’s bare feet rest on the dirt ground, and a couple of scrubby plants grow in the lower right corner of the painting, next to the rock on which the man sits. A river cuts through grassy land in the deep distance to the left of the rock formation. Several people gathered near the water’s edge point or look up into the sky, where a man kneeling in a chariot is drawn into a peach-toned cloud bank in the blue sky. Steep mountains on the horizon are icy blue.
Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo, Elijah Fed by the Raven, c. 1510, oil on panel transferred to canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.35

Elijah Fed by the Raven

Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo · c. 1510 · oil on panel transferred to canvas ·  Accession ID  1961.9.35