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A man kneels, holding a rock to his bare chest, in a rocky landscape in this tall, vertical painting. The scene is painted entirely in white and gray. The man, Saint Jerome, takes up the bottom half of the narrow panel. He faces our left almost in profile and looks up and off in that direction. He is clean-shaven with rounded, sagging cheeks, deep-set eyes, and wispy, curly hair. A robe with deep, angular folds is open across his chest and puddles on the ground around his feet. He holds a rock to his chest with one muscular arm, and the other hangs by his side holding another rock. A flat-topped, wide-brimmed hat is on the ground in front of his knees, and a lion lies next to him, to our left. The lion’s features are flattened and rounded, with almost human eyes, mouth, and ears. A ridge of craggy boulders separates Saint Jerome and the lion from the landscape beyond. A man rides a camel next to a walking man on the far side of the ridge. The camel rider holds a whip up high, and the other man carries a basket on a long stick slung across one shoulder. A stony hill rises steeply in the near distance behind this pair. A church is cut from the rock there. On a rocky path leading to the church, the lion rests his front paws up on Saint Jerome like a dog expecting a treat. Here, Saint Jerome wears his hat and long robes. He appears again just to our left, approaching an arched door of the church. Spires and flying buttresses surround the church like lace. A river winds to another town in the deep distance to our left under a cloudy sky.

Jan Gossaert

Saint Jerome Penitent [right panel], c. 1509/1512

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 41

Medium

oil on panel

Dimensions

painted surface: 86.7 x 24.5 cm (34 1/8 x 9 5/8 in.)
overall (panel): 86.7 x 25.3 cm (34 1/8 x 9 15/16 in.)

framed: 94.3 x 61.2 x 5.7 cm (37 1/8 x 24 1/8 x 2 1/4 in.)

Credit Line

Samuel H. Kress Collection

Accession Number

1952.5.40.b

Artists / Makers

Jan Gossaert (artist) Netherlandish, c. 1478 - 1532

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Inscription

Falsely inscribed center right on a small stone: AD (in ligature)

Provenance

John M. Romadka [d. 1898], Prague and Milwaukee, by 1858; his widow, Mrs. John M. Romadka [d. 1936]; their daughter, Mary Tekla Romadka, Pasadena, California.[1] (Duveen Brothers, New York, by 1945); purchased 1949 by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[2] gift 1952 by exchange to NGA.

[1] Unverified. Provenance is as given in Duveen Art Galleries, An Exhibition of Flemish Paintings of the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries (New York, 1946), no. 8; and Colin Eisler, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian (Oxford, 1977), 78-81.

[2] See The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/1852.

Associated Names

Duveen Brothers, Inc.
Kress Foundation, Samuel H.
Romadka, John M.
Romadka, John M., Mrs.
Romadka, Mary Tekla

Exhibition History

2010: Jan Gossaert's Renaissance, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The National Gallery, London, 2010-2011, not in London catalogue.

Technical Summary

Each panel consists of a single board with vertical grain. Both panels have been planed down to a thickness of 0.2 cm and were laminated onto a second wood panel. After being separated by Mario Modestini in 1950 the panels were cradled and narrow strips of wood were added to the right and left sides of each panel. The paintings were restored by Modestini in 1950 and a few areas were again treated by him in 1956. Although the support is in plane, x-radiographs indicate rather long vertical splits, three in each panel. These have been filled and retouched. Examination with infrared reflectography reveals scattered areas of underdrawing in the drapery and the landscape to the right of Jerome's left hand. Underdrawing is intermittently visible; there may be more that is not registering due to gray pigment, containing carbon black, in the upper paint layer that would register as opaque. Variations in transparency under infrared reflectography suggest that a number of different pigments were used to create the grisaille effect.

The panels are in fairly good condition. There is moderate abrasion in the hands and chest of Saint Jerome and to a lesser extent in areas of the sky, drapery and flesh. There is scattered retouching throughout the sky of both panels as well as in the lion and the face of Saint Jerome. To the right of Jerome's head and shoulders are several scratches.

The "yellow glazes" in the figure of Jerome mentioned by Eisler and others are actually discolored restorations probably applied to mask areas of abrasion.

Bibliography

1907: Winkler, Friedrich. "Gossaert, Jan." In Thieme-Becker. 37 vols. Leipzig, 1907-1950: 2(1921):412.

1916: Friedländer, Max J. Von Eyck bis Bruegel. Berlin, 1916: 188.

1924: Friedländer, Max J. Die altniederländische Malerei 14 vols.,1924-1937. Berlin, 1930: 8:154, no. 22, pl. 23. (English ed., 14 vols., 1967-1976. Leiden, 1972: 8:93, 120, no. 22, pl. 21.)

1933: Held, Julius. "Overzicht der Litteratuur betreffende Nederlandsche Kunst." Oud Holland 50 (1933): 137-138.

1933: Smits, K. De Ikonographie van de Nederlandsche Primitieven. Amsterdam, 1933: 187.

1945: Anon. "Old Masters Feature Flint Victory Show." The Art Digest 19 (15 September, 1945): 8, repro.

1945: Breuning, Margaret. "Portraying St. Jerome." Art Digest 19 (15 March, 1945): 21.

1945: Glück, Gustav. "Mabuse and the Development of the Flemish Renaissance." The Art Quarterly 8 (1945): 127, fig. 8.

1945: Louchheim, Aline. "Saint Jerome. Variations on a Theme." Art News 44 (15-31 March, 1945): 10, 31, repro.

1951: Folie, Jacqueline. "Les Dessins de Jean Gossaert dit Mabuse." Gazette des Beaux-Arts 38 (appeared 1960) (1951): 84.

1951: Frankfurter, Alfred. "Interpreting Masterpieces: Twenty-four Paintings from the Kress Collection." Art News 50 (1951): 114-115, repro. 109, 115.

1951: Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection Acquired by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation 1945-1951. Introduction by John Walker, text by William E. Suida. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1951: 198, no. 87, repro.

1952: Frankfurter, Alfred M. "Interpreting Masterpieces: Twenty-four Paintings from the Kress Collection." Art News Annual 16 (1952): 114-115, repro. 109

1959: Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 281, repro.

1960: Broadley Hugh T. Flemish Painting in the National Gallery of Art (Booklet no. 5 in Ten Schools of Painting in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC). Washington, 1960: 7, 28-29, color repro.

1961: Osten, Gert von der. "Studien zu Jan Gossaert." De Artibus Opuscula XL. Essays in Honor of Erwin Panofsky. 2 vols. New York, 1961: 457, fig. 1.

1961: Walker, John, Guy Emerson, and Charles Seymour. Art Treasures for America: An Anthology of Paintings & Sculpture in the Samuel H. Kress Collection. London, 1961: 86, 87, 211, fig. 79.

1962: Winkler, Friedrich. "Aus der ersten Schaffenzeit des Jan Gossaert." Pantheon 20 (1962): 150-151, fig. 11.

1963: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. New York, 1963 (reprinted 1964 in French, German, and Spanish): 304, repro.

1965: Bruyn, Josua. "The Jan Gossaert Exhibition in Rotterdam and Bruges." The Burlington Magazine 107 (1965): 463.

1965: Jean Gossaert dit Mabuse. Exh. cat. Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Groeningemuseum, Bruges, 1965: 53.

1965: Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 60.

1968: Cuttler, Charles D. Northern Painting, from Pucelle to Bruegel: Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Sixteenth Centuries. New York, 1968: 428.

1968: Herzog, Sadja. "Jan Gossaert called Mabuse (ca. 1478-1532): A Study of his Chronology with a Catalogue of his Works." Ph.D. diss., Bryn Mawr College, 1968: 60-62, 210-213, no. 5, pl. 6.

1968: National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 52, repro.

1968: The Picture Gallery. Summary Catalogue of Paintings in the Dahlem Museum. Berlin, 1968: 51, no. 551A.

1969: Osten, Gert von der, and Horst Vey. Painting and Sculpture in Germany and the Netherlands 1500 to 1600. Harmondsworth, 1969: 156.

1970: Herzog, Sadja. "Gossaert, Italy and the National Gallery's Saint Jerome Penitent." Studies in the History of Art 3 (1969-70):59-73, figs. 1-5.

1972: Hand, John Oliver. Joos van Cleve and the Saint Jerome in the Norton Gallery and School of Art. West Palm Beach, 1972: unpaginated, fig. 2.

1974: Kuretsky, Susan. "Rembrandt's Tree Stump: An Iconographic Attribute of St. Jerome." The Art Bulletin 56 (1974): 573-574, fig. 4.

1975: European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 156, repro.

1975: Gemäldegalerie Berlin, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Katalog der ausgestellten Gemälde des 13.-18. Jahrhunderts. Berlin, 1975: 179-180, no. 551A.

1975: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York, 1975: 134, figs. 137, 138.

1977: Eisler, Colin. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian. Oxford, 1977: 78-81, figs. 73-75.

1984: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 135, no.132, color repro.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 181, repro.

1986: Hand, John Oliver and Martha Wolff. Early Netherlandish Painting. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, 1986: 99-103, repro. 100.