Landscape with Saint Jerome

Attributed to Bles Hendrick met de called Civetta

(Bouvignes? c. 1510 - after 1554)

This painting was executed in the circle of Hendrick met de Bles, called Civetta. It seems to derive from a panel with a similar subject by Joachim Patenier, held at the National Gallery of London. It depicts Saint Jerome, who is shown here in the centre of the composition together with a lion, following the tradition that the saint extracted a thorn from its paw. In the distance, a caravan of men and camels moves towards a small village: this motif also forms part of the legend surrounding the hermit, which narrates the theft of a donkey by a group of merchants riding camels, who are then forced by a lion to return the animal to its rightful owner.

Object details

Commentary

Of unknown provenance, this painting is first documented in connection to the Borghese Collection in 1693. In the inventory of that year it undoubtedly corresponds to the ‘oblong work one span high with villages and rocky mountains and a small figure’. The compiler of this document listed it as number ‘204’, which is still visible in the bottom right hand corner. The inventory ascribed the panel to Civetta, a name which was subsequently forgotten: it does not appear in connection with the work in the 1833 Inventario Fidecommissario, while for his part Venturi (1893) timidly ascribed it to Joachim Patenier. The attribution to Civetta was only revived in the 20th century by Giulio Cantalamessa (Note manoscritte; see Della Pergola 1959).

In 1928, Roberto Longhi maintained that the composition dated to a later period with respect to Patenier’s style. He pointed to its similarities with another Landscape in the Borghese Collection (inv. no. 359) and suggested that the work in question was in the manner of Valckenborch. Paola della Pergola (1959) disagreed and in spite of Leo van Puyvelde’s (1950) negative opinion claimed that the work had much in common with two panels preserved in Milan (private collection) and London (National Gallery), respectively, the latter having already been attributed to Patenier (De Tolnay 1956). Nonetheless, on that occasion Della Pergola was not able to establish whether the work in question was a derivation of the painting in London, or whether both derived from an older exemplar. This uncertainty was only resolved in 2000, when Luc Serck identified the common prototype in Madrid (Prado Museum, no. 1614).

As in other works by the Flemish painter, this painting shows a number of details which he borrowed from other contemporary compositions, such as the procession of camels from Girolamo da Carpi’s Landscape (Galleria Borghese, inv. no. 8), which Civetta most likely saw in Ferrara, where the painter worked at the Este court.

Antonio Iommelli