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Francesco Benaglio

Saint Jerome, c. 1470/1475

West Building, Ground Floor - Gallery 37

Medium

tempera on spruce panel

Dimensions

overall: 139.1 x 67.3 cm (54 3/4 x 26 1/2 in.)

framed: 155.6 x 83.8 x 11.4 cm (61 1/4 x 33 x 4 1/2 in.)

Credit Line

Samuel H. Kress Collection

Accession Number

1952.5.51

Artists / Makers

Francesco Benaglio (artist) Veronese, c. 1432 - 1492

Image Use

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Inscription

lower right on the cartellino on the pilaster: Franciscus benalius Filius petri / Albado (Francesco Benaglio, son of Pietro, dealer in cereals); lower center on the step below the saint: .SS. HIERONYMVS.

Provenance

Sir Francis Baring, 1st Bt. [1740-1810], London;[1] (sale, Christie's, London, 15 March 1805, no. 51, as by Francesco di Ladi);[2] (Thomas Winstanley, Liverpool); William Roscoe [1753-1831], Liverpool, by 1813, sold before 1816.[3] Private collection, England. (sale, Robinson, Fisher & Harding, London, 27 November 1924, no. 99, as St. Francis by C. Crivelli).[4] Art market, London, by 1933.[5] (Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, Florence);[6] purchased July 1948 by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[7] gift 1952 to NGA.

[1] On this collector, see Francis Haskell, Rediscoveries in art: some aspects of taste, fashion, and collecting in England and France, Ithaca, 1976: 72.

[2] Burton Fredericksen (in The Index of paintings sold in the British Isles during the nineteenth century, 4 vols. Santa Barbara, 1988: 1:49, 295) established the painting's ownership, which is not specified in the sale catalogue, on the basis of an annotated copy of the catalogue in the files of Christie's in London.

[3] See Michael Compton, "William Roscoe and Early Collectors of Italian Primitives," Liverpool Bulletin 9 (1960-1961): 47. Hugh Macandrew (letter of 11 September 1961 to William Campbell, in NGA curatorial files) transcribes a description of the painting in Roscoe's hand from a manuscript catalogue of his collection (Roscoe Papers, Liverpool Library, 3897).

[4] Everett Fahy (his letter of 19 November 1984 in NGA curatorial files) called attention to a Cooper negative of the painting in the Frick Art Reference Library in New York; the photograph, taken on the occasion of the sale in 1924 in London, shows the painting dirty and with a check running vertically through the figure, but otherwise with an aspect not unlike the present one.

[5] According to Evelyn Sandberg-Vavalà, "Francesco Benaglio," Art in America 21 (1933): 62-63.

[6] By April 1948 (the date of Roberto Longhi's expertise, copy in NGA curatorial files), the panel must already have been with Contini Bonacossi, for whom Longhi wrote his opinion in Italian (his expertises for the Kress Foundation are usually in English).

[7] The Kress Foundation made an offer to Contini Bonacossi on 7 June 1948 for a group of twenty-eight paintings, including the Benaglio; the offer was accepted on 11 July 1948 (see copies of correspondence in NGA curatorial files, see also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/1832).

Associated Names

Art market, London
Baring, 1st Bt., Francis, Sir
Christie, Manson & Woods, Ltd.
Contini Bonacossi, Alessandro, Count
Kress Foundation, Samuel H.
Private Collection (NGA Former Owner)
Robinson, Fisher and Harding
Roscoe, William
Winstanley, Thomas

Exhibition History

2006: Andrea Mantegna e le Arti a Verona, 1450-1500, Palazzo della Gran Guardia, Verona, 2006-2007, no. 32, repro.

Bibliography

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: 72, no. 25, repro., as St. Anthony Abbot.

1959: Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 113, repro.

1965: Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 13.

1968: National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 6, repro.

1968: Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XV-XVI Century. London, 1968: 10, fig. 18.

1975: European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 24, repro.

1979: Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1979: 1:53; 2:pl. 37.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 45, repro.

2002: Deceptions and Illusions: Five Centuries of Trompe l'Oeil Painting. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2002-2003: no. 25.

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: 101-105, color repro.