Lot 2011 Dα

"A student of Hendrick van Cleve (I) in 1519, Jan van Hemessen became a freemaster of the Guild of St Luke in Antwerp in 1524. In the same year he appointed his first apprentice, followed by at least five others, including two of his sons. His most famous and successful student however was his daughter, Catharina van Hemessen (1528 – after 1583).

Jan van Hemessens core oeuvre consists of 20 fully signed and dated paintings, dating from 1525 or 1531 to 1557, of which five are different compositions of the Penitent St Jerome. Besides some more traditional religious topics, Van Hemessen painted interpretations of The Parable of the Prodigal Son, thereby bridging the gap towards his more mundane, even burlesque depictions of “everyday life.”
Among the body of some 35 unsigned and undated, yet generally accepted works of Jan van Hemessen sits another composition of the Penitent St Jerome, of which the painting in the Palazzo Rosso in Genoa may be the first one (ill. 1). The present lot is another version of this composition.

Fuelled by Erasmus’ publication of Jerome's letters in 1516, and Dürer’s famous painting of the saint in his Study (Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lissabon, inv./cat. no. 828), especially Antwerp painters set out a new type of iconography which would become popular in the following decades. Almost in the manner of a devotional painting, the current work presents St Jerome in his purest form, in prayer in front of a crucifix, at the moment in which it appeared to him as a vivid vision, provoked by prayer. The onlooker only sees the back of the crucifix, which is rare, and adds to the serene quality of this composition.

The cardinals hat and lion – which are common attributes of the saint, but strongly rejected by Erasmus – are nowhere to be found. Also the ageing, but not old or tired man with particularly strong hands, are in keeping with Erasmus’ Remarks of 1522. Only some key elements of the saint´s penitence are depicted. The stone with which he mortifies his chest lays in front of him, as if serving as a pedestal for the crucifix. As a subtle reminder of our mortality. With no further attributes or landscape, the red habit serves as sole identifier of the figure as St Jerome.

Besides the fact that the current lot’s head and hands are closely related to the painting in Genoa, they also bear resemblance to other signed paintings by van Hemessen, such as the 1543 Penitent St Jerome in the Hermitage (N451, no. 911) and the signed painting of the same theme in Antwerp (Snijders&Rockoxhuis inv. 77.3).

Several versions of the present Penitent St Jerome are known today. Besides the work in Genoa, there is also a similar, portrait format painting, formerly in the collection of Marquis de Victoire de Heredia in Madrid (until 1912) and from 1935 until 1955 in the the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, which is now in private ownership and on loan to the Groeningemuseum Brugge (pl. 000). Others are in Berlin (Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen) and again in private ownership. A significantly smaller version on canvas also appeared on the art market in 2015 attributed to a follower of Van Hemessen."