(Venice 1707–1769)
The Madonna appears to Saint Jerome,
oil on canvas, shaped top, 31 x 23 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private Collection, Treviso

We are grateful to Mauro Lucco for confirming the attribution and for his help in cataloguing the present painting.

This small canvas belongs to a group of similar arched top paintings, all with exactly the same dimensions. Divided between public and private collections, one was with Aldo Galli in Carate Brianza (see: M. Magrini, Francesco Fontebasso, Venezia 1988, fig. 33). A second, for which there is a drawing in the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna (inv. 1616), is in a private collection, London. A third was in a private collection, Berlin and passed into the collection of D. Bossi, Munich, a fourth was at Finarte, Milan (Asta 15, 6th April 1965, lot 53) and finally, a fifth is in the Museo Civico, Padua (inv. 1068; see: G. Poli, in Da Padovanino a Tiepolo. Dipinti dei Musei Civici di Padova del Seicento e del Settecento, Milan-Padua, 1997, pp. 270-271). A second drawing in the Pinacoteca at Bologna (inv. 3657) attests to the presence of at least one more painting in this series: it shows the saint with his back turned and the Madonna facing outwards.

Another group of paintings which represent the same subject, are somewhat smaller – about 29 x 22 cm – and without an arched top. They are divided between the Louvre (inv. M.I. 883), the National Museum at Budapest (inv. 666), the Galleria Nazionale at Trieste (inv. Mentasti 34) and the Lussinpiccolo Museum, Croatia (see: E. Martini, La pittura del Settecento veneto, Udine 1982, p. 529; Magrini, op. cit., pp. 184-185; G. Gamulin, Proposte attributive per il Settecento, in “Arte Veneta” 1975, pp. 244-245). At present it is impossible to tell if these originally also had an arched top as Magrini has suggested (p. 130). According to Zampetti (as reported by E. Martini op. cit. p. 529), all these small works were made for the confratelli of the Scuola di San Girolamo e della Vergine called ‘della Giustiza’, which is still better known by the names ‘Scuola dei picài’ or ‘di San Fantin’ (today their buildings are the headquarters of the Ateneo Veneto). In all of these paintings, it is the presence of both Saint Jerome and the Virgin that makes this suggestion of patronage credible, especially in view of the fact that there was another Scuola di San Girolamo, but this had no dedication to the Virgin (its buildings are entirely destroyed today). The confratelli’s habit of requesting the same subject, in the same format, but deployed in countless different ways is not recorded for any other Venetian religious organisation. The fact that Fontebasso himself repeated the figure of San Francesco di Paola is not comparable because the variant features in this case include the dimensions, whether the subject was shown full or half figure, and whether he was shown in a narrative or iconic context. Consequently, each work differs radically. What appears to be at the root of the Saint Jerome and the Virgin series, is the artist’s own idea of a creative challenge, demonstrating the inexhaustible potentialities of his own imagination by representing the same scene with the same protagonists in countless variant forms. In this spontaneous series of small scenes, it appears that he wished to introduce a suggestion of time. Therefore, the Saint might be shown kneeling, seated, lying down or bent-over. Meanwhile the Virgin is presented in a side or three-quarter profile, or frontally, in a virtually infinite range of possibilities.

In the present painting, Saint Jerome is shown studying and meditating on the sacred texts in his Syrian hermitage. Just beyond, there is an evidently Venetian hamlet with two bell towers. The birch tree, the rustic fence, the thatched hut, the docile lion are all features that reoccur in the paintings in the series. The moment is captured in bright light that seems capable of substituting the spatial definition of the forms with an almost intoxicating graphic context of scintillatingly calligraphic lines.

The series is usual dated to around 1750-1760 and the present work can be compared to another work that could have been a catalyst for the series as a whole, the Saint Jerome in penitence a in the Museo Civico at Belluno (see: M. Lucco, Catalogo del Museo Civico di Belluno. I disegni, Venice 1989, pp. 94-96). It is closely connected to the frescoes for the Church of Santa Annunziata at Trento which are dated to 1736.