Landscape with St Jerome
Maerten van Heemskerck (1498–1574)
1547
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In the first half of the sixteenth century, it became far from uncommon for northern European artists to visit Italy, and above all Rome, to study and admire the remains of classical antiquity and more recent achievements, notably the works of Michelangelo and Raphael. During his time in Rome from 1532 to 1536/37, Maerten van Heemskerck executed numerous detailed pen drawings of the most notable collections of ancient sculpture, and subsequently in 1553 also produced a magnificent ‘Self-portrait’ (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge), in which the foliage-encrusted remains of the Colosseum serve as a backdrop to his arresting bearded likeness.
The present painting, which is signed and dated 1547, blatantly subordinates the religious theme to its monumental setting. This comprises gigantic classical architectural fragments, together with immense, strangely animated sculptural elements, of which the most authentic are the marble ‘Tiber’ with Romulus, Remus, and the she-wolf to the right (directly based on an existing counterpart on the Capitol) and the damaged bronze of ‘Hercules and Antaeus’ to the left while the most fantastical is the Egyptian caryatid, also on the left. The principal figure of its protagonist, the hermit Saint Jerome, is shown half-naked in the company of his tame lion and a discarded whip, contemplating a miniature of the Crucifixion in a book of hours, resting his left hand on a skull, and holding a rock with which to beat his breast in his right, but also reappears in full cardinal’s robes in the middle distance. Alongside this second representation of him, Heemskerck has added a version of the story told in the ‘Golden Legend’, a medieval compilation of religious narratives, of how the lion rescued a donkey who was his companion and had been kidnapped by merchants, who are shown fleeing in various directions. The Liechtenstein Collections also include a closely related etching (GR 2206) dated 1552 of the same basic composition with various minor differences. Signed and dated by Hieronymus Cock below Jerome’s lion, an inscription on Jerome’s book also acknowledges Heemskerck as the inventor of the design.
- Material/technique
- oil on oak panel
- Measurements
- 105 × 161 cm
- Acquisition
- acquired in 2006 by Prince Hans-Adam II von und zu Liechtenstein
- Currently exhibited
- Garden Palace, permanent presentation
- Artists/makers/authors
- Maerten van Heemskerck
- Inventory number
- GE 2404
- Signature/inscriptions content only available in German
- sign und dat. unten links: Martinus Heemskerck fecit 1547
- Provenance
- first mentioned in the catalogue of the Schönborn-Buchheim Collection by Johann Balthasar Gutwein in 1746 (in the picture room, no. 10); documented in 1896 in the Schönborn-Buchheim Collection in Georg Frimmel "Kleine Galeriestunden" (cat. no. 11); private collection; acquired in 2006 by Prince Hans-Adam II von und zu Liechtenstein
- Place of origin
- Holland
- Iconography
- St. Jerome , Ruin landscape
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