Jan Sanders van Hemessen The penitent Saint Jerome Oil... Lot 2011

Jan Sanders van Hemessen The penitent Saint Jerome Oil on wood (parquet). 51 x 65 cm. Expert opinion Dr. Till-Holger Borchert, Aachen (oral communication, January 2023). - Dr. Lars Hendrikman, Maastricht, March 12, 2023. Provenance Belgian private collection. The present painting, previously unpublished, is an important addition to the oeuvre of Jan van Hemessen. Dr. Till-Holger Borchert and Dr. Lars Hendrikman have confirmed the attribution to this important painter of the Flemish Renaissance. We thank Lars Hendrikman for the following catalog contribution: "A pupil of Hendrick van Cleve (I) in 1519, Jan van Hemessen became a freemaster of the Guild of St. Luke in Antwerp in 1524. That same year he hired his first apprentice, followed by at least five more, including two by his sons. His most famous and successful pupil, however, was his daughter Catharina van Hemessen (1528 - after 1583). Jan van Hemessen's core oeuvre consists of 20 fully signed and dated paintings dating from 1525 or 1531 to 1557, five of which are different compositions of the penitent St. Jerome. In addition to some more traditional religious subjects, van Hemessen painted interpretations of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, bridging the gap with his more secular, even burlesque depictions of "everyday life." Among the approximately 35 unsigned and undated but generally accepted works by Jan van Hemessen is another composition of the penitent St. Jerome, of which the painting in the Palazzo Rosso in Genoa may be the earliest (fig. 1). The present painting is another version of this composition. Prompted by Erasmus's publication of the Letters of St. Jerome in 1516 and Dürer's famous painting of the saint in the study (Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon , inv./cat.no. 828), Antwerp painters in particular developed a new type of iconography that would become popular in the following decades. Almost a devotional painting, the present painting shows St. Jerome in his purest form, praying before a crucifix at the moment it appeared to him as a vivid vision provoked by prayer. The viewer sees only the back of the crucifix, which is rare and contributes to the serene quality of this composition. The cardinal's hat and lion - common attributes of the saint but strictly rejected by Erasmus - are nowhere to be found. The aging, but not old or tired, man with particularly strong hands is also consistent with Erasmus' 1522 remarks. Only a few key elements of the saint's penitence are depicted. The stone with which he chastises his chest lies in front of him, as if serving as a pedestal for the crucifix, a reminder of our mortality. Without other attributes or landscape, the red habit finally identifies the saint as St. Jerome. Apart from being closely related to the painting in Genoa, the saint's heads and hands in our painting are close to signed paintings by van Hemessen, such as the penitent St. Jerome of 1543 in the Hermitage (N451, no. 911) and the signed painting of the same subject in Antwerp (Snijders&Rockoxhuis Inv. 77.3). Several versions of the present composition with penitent St. Jerome are known today. Besides the one in Genoa, a similar but vertical painting formerly in the collection of the Marquis de Victoire de Heredia in Madrid (until 1912) and in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts from 1935 to 1955, is now privately owned and on loan in the Groeningemuseum Bruges. Others are in Berlin (Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen) and again in private hands. A significantly reduced version on canvas appeared on the art market in 2015 as a successor to van Hemessen." Fig. 1 / Ill. 1: Jan Sanders van Hemessen, The Penitent St Jerome / The penitent St Jerome, Palazzo Rosso, Genoa