Saint Jerome in the Wilderness

c. 1500/1505

Cima da Conegliano

Artist, Venetian, c. 1459 - 1517 or 1518

A balding, bare-chested man with a long white beard kneels on a dirt ground to our right in front of a rocky cave opening in this vertical painting. The man holds a rock in one hand and looks up at a man hanging on a cross to the left. The kneeling man, Saint Jerome, has peach-colored skin and a fringe of gray hair. He has a rounded nose, deep-set eyes, a prominent brow, hollow cheekbones, and his lips are parted to reveal two teeth. His body is angled to our left, and he looks up in that direction with blue eyes. His sleeveless, long, powder-blue garment is taken off one shoulder to reveal his chest, and one bare foot sticks out under the hem of the robe behind him. A lion lies under the cave opening, which towers over Saint Jerome and continues off the top edge of the painting. The crucifix is opposite Saint Jerome. The haloed, mostly nude man hanging on the cross is about half the size of Saint Jerome, and has pale skin, brown hair, and a white loincloth across his hips. The wooden cross is braced by rocks. A black snake emerges from a crevice near the base of the cross and appears to head for Saint Jerome. A vivid blue river is glimpsed just beyond this rocky bit of land. Trees and a hill on the far side frame a deep, grassy expanse that leads back to a walled town and pale blue mountains along the horizon. A few white clouds skim across a pale blue sky in the top left quadrant of the painting. The artist signed the work as if he had written his name on a scroll of paper propped up in front of Saint Jerome’s knee, in the bottom right corner of the painting: “Joannis b pt C.”

Media Options

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On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 10

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on panel transferred to canvas

  • Credit Line

    Samuel H. Kress Collection

  • Dimensions

    overall: 48 × 40 cm (18 7/8 × 15 3/4 in.)
    framed: 66.68 × 58.74 × 10.8 cm (26 1/4 × 23 1/8 × 4 1/4 in.)

  • Accession

    1939.1.168

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Probably W.N. Hill, Bath; [1] (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 30 November - 1 December 1827, no. 59); bought by Radcliff.[2] Alexander Orloff-Davidoff, Saint Petersburg, by 1896;[3] sold 1930 to Arthur Hamilton Lee, 1st Viscount Lee of Fareham [1868-1947], Old Quarries, Gloucestershire;[4] (Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, Florence); purchased June 1935 by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[5] gift 1939 to NGA.
[1] Francis Russell, "Review of Peter Humfrey, Cima da Conegliano, Cambridge, 1983," Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 132 (1984): 410, connects the Washington panel with that sold by Hill, described as "Cima di Conegliano: St. Jerome's Penitence, with romantic scenery, small upright, highly finished."
[2] Buyer according to annotated auctioneer catalogue, Christie's Archive, London. The catalogue describes the seller as a gentleman who had lived in Italy for twenty years.
[3] All references are simply to "Orloff-Davidoff collection," except for a note (in NGA curatorial files) stating "probably Alexander, according to a relative." Fritz Harck, "Notizen über italienische Bilder in petersburger Sammlungen," Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft 19 (1896): 434, indicates that when the painting was in this collection the inscription read "Joannis bellinus opus."
[4] Ellis K. Waterhouse stated that he saw the painting when it was being sold in London in 1930 from the Orloff-Davidoff collection; Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XV-XVI Century, London, 1968: 60 n. 3.
[5] The bill of sale, dated 12 June 1935 was for a total of twenty-one paintings (copy in NGA curatorial files). See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/1848.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1938

  • Venetian Painting From the Fifteenth Century through the Eighteenth Century, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, June-July 1938, no. 22, repro.

  • Special Exhibition of Venetian Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection, Seattle Art Museum; Portland Museum of Art, Oregon; Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Alabama, August-October 1938, no catalogue.

1940

  • Four Centuries of Venetian Painting, Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio, 1940, no. 19, repro.

2010

  • Cima da Conegliano: Poeta del Paesaggio, Palazzo Sarcinelli, Conegliano, 2010, no. 40, repro.

Bibliography

1896

  • Harck, Fritz. "Notizen über italienische Bilder in petersburger Sammlungen," Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft 19 (1896):434.

1923

  • Marle, Raimond van. The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting. 19 vols. The Hague, 1923-1938: 17(1935):455.

1938

  • Frankfurter, Alfred M. “The Venetians in California.” Art News 36 (16 July 1938): 7-11.

1941

  • Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 40, no. 279.

1942

  • Book of Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 245, repro. 85.

1945

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1945 (reprinted 1947, 1949): 95, repro.

1951

  • Einstein, Lewis. Looking at Italian Pictures in the National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1951: 82.

1952

  • Berenson, Bernard. Italian Painters of the Renaissance. 3rd edition. Oxford, 1952: pl. 28.

1953

  • Coletti, Luigi. La pittura veneta del Quattrocento. Novara, 1953: 179, repro.

1957

  • Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Venetian School. 2 vols. London, 1957: 1:68.

1958

  • De Logu, Giuseppe. Pittura veneziana dal XIV al XVIII secolo. Bergamo, 1958: 237.

  • Vaudoyer, Jean-Louis. La Peinture vénitienne. Paris, 1958: 237.

1959

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 149, repro.

  • Coletti, Luigi. Cima da Conegliano. Venice, 1959: 84, pl. 13, fig. 75.

1960

  • The National Gallery of Art and Its Collections. Foreword by Perry B. Cott and notes by Otto Stelzer. National Gallery of Art, Washington (undated, 1960s): 9.

1961

  • DeWald, Ernest T. Italian Painting 1200-1600. New York, 1961: 521.

  • Puppi, Lionello. “Per Pasqualino Veneto.” Critica d’Arte 8, no. 44 (1961): 521.

1962

  • Roli, Renato. “Cima da Conegliano.” Arte Antica e Moderna 19 (1962): IX.

1963

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. New York, 1963 (reprinted 1964 in French, German, and Spanish): 303, repro.

1965

  • Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 27.

  • Zava Bocazzi, Franca. Cima da Conegliano. Milan, 1965: 5, repro.

1967

  • Jungblut, Renate. Hieronymus Darstellung und Verehrung eines Kirchenvaters. Bamberg, 1967: 163, fig. 220.

1968

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 20, repro.

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XV-XVI Century. London, 1968: 59-60, fig. 142.

1972

  • Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, MA, 1972: 53, 409, 645.

1975

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 70, repro.

1979

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. Washington, 1979: 1:131-132; 2:pl. 91.

1980

  • Friedmann, Herbert. A Bestiary for Saint Jerome: Animal Symbolism in European Religious Art. Washington, DC, 1980: 49, 73, 289, 293, 321, fig. 33.

1981

  • Menegazzi, Luigi. Cima da Conegliano. Treviso, 1981: 10, 40, 42, 112-113, pl. 96.

1983

  • Humfrey, Peter. Cima da Conegliano. Cambridge and New York, 1983: 42, 166, pl. 28.

  • Lattanzi, Marco, and Marica Mercalli. “Il tema del San Girolamo nell’eremo nella cultura veneta tra Quattrocento e Cinquecento.” In Bruno Contardi and Augusto Gentili, eds. Il S. Girolamo di Lorenzo Lotto a Castel S. Angelo. Exh. cat. Museo Nazionale di Castel Sant’Angelo, Rome, 1983: 97, fig. 54.

1984

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 191, no. 218, color repro.

  • Russell, Francis. “Review of Peter Humfrey, Cima da Conegliano (1983).” Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 132 (1984): 410.

1985

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 89, repro.

1986

  • Faldon, Nilo, and Francesco Valcanover. Giambattista Cima da Conegliano. Treviso, 1986: 107, pl. 8.

1987

  • Russo, Daniel. Saint Jérome en Italie: Étude d’iconographie et de spiritualité XIIIe-XVe siècle. Paris and Rome, 1987: 211, fig. 39.

1992

  • Fomichova, Tamara. The Hermitage Catalogue of West European Painting, Vol. 2: Venetian Painting of the Fourteenth to Eighteenth Centuries. Florence, 1992: 146.

1994

  • Echols, Robert. "Cima and the Theme of Saint Jerome in the Wilderness." Venezia Cinquecento IV, no. 8 (July-December 1994): 47-69, fig. 9.

1998

  • Boeckl, Christine M. “Penitence/Repentance." In Helene E. Roberts, ed. Encyclopedia of Comparative Iconography: Themes Depicted in Works of Art. 2 vols. Chicago, 1998: 2:723.

2003

  • Boskovits, Miklós, and David Alan Brown, et al. Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 2003: 210-213, color repro.

2012

  • Villa, Giovanni Carlo Federico. Cima da Conegliano, maître de la Renaissance vénitienne. Exh. cat. Musee du Luxembourg, Paris, 2012: 173, 174 fig. 44.

2013

  • Potočnik, Michele, and Giovanni Carlo Federico Villa, eds. Il paesaggio di Cima: Da Conegliano ai monti di Endimione. Treviso, 2013: , 69, 103, 113, cat. 24.

Inscriptions

lower right on scroll: Joannis b[a]pt[ista] C[o]n...

Wikidata ID

Q3947304

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