Saint Jerome

Attributed to Cobergher Wenzel

Antwerp 1557/1561 - Bruxelles 1635

This painting entered the Borghese Collection at an uncertain date. It was traditionally ascribed to Girolamo Muziano, until early 20th-century critics changed the attribution of the Flemish painter Wenzel Cobergher.

It depicts St Jerome, Church Father and Doctor, shown here as he prays in front of a crucifix together with the inseparable lion. According to legend, the noble hermit retreated to a cave to attend to his translation of the Bible, where he cured the ferocious animal by removing a painful thorn from its paw.

Object details

Commentary

The provenance of this painting is still unknown, as is the date of its entrance into the collection at the Casino di Porta Pinciana. Although Paola della Pergola (1959) identified it as the ‘Saint Jerome, Muziano’ mentioned by Iacomo Manilli in 1650 in the ‘Genius Room’ (Manilli 1650), the description of this work given by the compiler of the c.1633 inventory (Corradini 1998) does not at all correspond to the painting in question; the entry in fact reads ‘Saint Jerome seated with a crucifix in his hand [...] 5¾ spans high and 4¼ wide’ (Inv. c. 1633). Clearly both the scene and the dimensions do not match those of the work under consideration.

As that hypothesis cannot be accepted, we must move its entrance into the Borghese Collection to a later date, probably sometime between the late 18th century and 1833, when the work is certainly recognisable in the Inventario Fidecommissario of that year. Whether it also corresponds to the ‘Saint Jerome, Muziano’ of the 1790 inventory of the Borghese belongings is difficult to establish, given the generic description, which could match both the work listed in the 17th-century inventories and that mentioned in the Inventario Fidecommissario.

Initially ascribed to Girolamo Muziano (Inv. Fid. 1833; Piancastelli 1891; Venturi 1893), Roberto Longhi was the first to propose the name of the Flemish painter Wenzel Cobergher (‘Not by Muziano but by a Mannerist whom it is difficult to identify, perhaps Flemish; some association with Wenzel Cobergher’; Longhi 1928). While subsequent critics agreed (Da Como 1930; Della Pergola 1959; Herrmann Fiore 2006), more recently Patrizia Tosini (2008) called this view into question: starting from a larger-format version of the painting by an anonymous artist – today held at the Galleria Nazionale di Arte Antica in Rome – this scholar suggested that the two works were by the same painter, who also executed another Penitent Saint Jerome which exchanged hands on the antiques market several years ago (Tosini 2008). As many critics have pointed out (I. Faldi in Della Pergola 1959; Canatalamessa 1912; Della Pergola 1959), the Borghese Saint Jerome certainly shares a number of features with the figures of Bartholomäus Spranger, in particular with the powerful design of his Saint John executed for the Roman church of San Giovanni in Oleo, as well as with the cold sensuality of the sculpted poses of some of his heroes. This style was common to many artists active in Rome during the second half of the 16th century and is particularly evident in Cobergher, who is documented as having been in Rome between 1598/9 and 1603, that is, after his productive stay in Naples and just before his departure for the court of the Habsburg Archduke Albert VII and his wife Isabella Clara Eugenia. Critics have in fact dated the work to his time in the Eternal City.

Antonio Iommelli