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Inscription

lower right on the cartellino on the pilaster: Franciscus benalius Filius petri / Albado (Francesco Benaglio, son of Pietro, dealer in cereals); lower center on the step below the saint: .SS. HIERONYMVS.

Provenance

Sir Francis Baring, 1st Bt. [1740-1810], London;[1] (sale, Christie's, London, 15 March 1805, no. 51, as by Francesco di Ladi);[2] (Thomas Winstanley, Liverpool); William Roscoe [1753-1831], Liverpool, by 1813, sold before 1816.[3] Private collection, England. (sale, Robinson, Fisher & Harding, London, 27 November 1924, no. 99, as St. Francis by C. Crivelli).[4] Art market, London, by 1933.[5] (Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, Florence);[6] purchased July 1948 by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[7] gift 1952 to NGA.

[1] On this collector, see Francis Haskell, Rediscoveries in art: some aspects of taste, fashion, and collecting in England and France, Ithaca, 1976: 72.

[2] Burton Fredericksen (in The Index of paintings sold in the British Isles during the nineteenth century, 4 vols. Santa Barbara, 1988: 1:49, 295) established the painting's ownership, which is not specified in the sale catalogue, on the basis of an annotated copy of the catalogue in the files of Christie's in London.

[3] See Michael Compton, "William Roscoe and Early Collectors of Italian Primitives," Liverpool Bulletin 9 (1960-1961): 47. Hugh Macandrew (letter of 11 September 1961 to William Campbell, in NGA curatorial files) transcribes a description of the painting in Roscoe's hand from a manuscript catalogue of his collection (Roscoe Papers, Liverpool Library, 3897).

[4] Everett Fahy (his letter of 19 November 1984 in NGA curatorial files) called attention to a Cooper negative of the painting in the Frick Art Reference Library in New York; the photograph, taken on the occasion of the sale in 1924 in London, shows the painting dirty and with a check running vertically through the figure, but otherwise with an aspect not unlike the present one.

[5] According to Evelyn Sandberg-Vavalà, "Francesco Benaglio," Art in America 21 (1933): 62-63.

[6] By April 1948 (the date of Roberto Longhi's expertise, copy in NGA curatorial files), the panel must already have been with Contini Bonacossi, for whom Longhi wrote his opinion in Italian (his expertises for the Kress Foundation are usually in English).

[7] The Kress Foundation made an offer to Contini Bonacossi on 7 June 1948 for a group of twenty-eight paintings, including the Benaglio; the offer was accepted on 11 July 1948 (see copies of correspondence in NGA curatorial files, see also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/1832).

Exhibition History

2006
Andrea Mantegna e le Arti a Verona, 1450-1500, Palazzo della Gran Guardia, Verona, 2006-2007, no. 32, repro.

Bibliography

1933
Sandberg Vavalà, Evelyn. “Francesco Benaglio.” Art in America 21 no. 2 (March 1933): 62-63, 65, fig. 12.
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: 72, no. 25, repro., as St. Anthony Abbot.
1959
Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 113, repro.
1960
Compton, Michael. “William Roscoe and Early Collectors of Italian Primitives.” Liverpool Bulletin: Walker Art Gallery 9 (1960-1961): 28 n. 4, 47, fig. 1.
1961
Paccagnini, Giovanni, ed. Andrea Mantegna. Exh. cat. Palazzo Ducale, Mantua, 1961: 103.
1962
Del Bravo, Carlo. “Sul seguito veronese di Andrea Mantegna.” Paragone 8 (1962): 56.
1965
Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 13.
1968
Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Central Italian and North Italian Schools. 3 vols. London, 1968: 1:38. 2:pl.1300.
1968
National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 6, repro.
1968
Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XV-XVI Century. London, 1968: 10, fig. 18.
1972
Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, MA, 1972: 25, 647.
1974
Rognini, Luciano. “Francesco Benaglio.” In Pierpaolo Brugnoli, ed. Maestri della pittura veronese. Verona, 1974: 86, 88, fig. 57.
1975
European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 24, repro.
1979
Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1979: 1:53; 2:pl. 37.
1980
Friedmann, Herbert. A Bestiary for Saint Jerome: Animal Symbolism in European Religious Art. Washington, DC, 1980: 214, fig. 149.
1981
Cuppini, Maria Teresa. “L’arte a Verona tra XV e XVI secolo.” In Verona e il suo territorio. 6 vols in 12 parts. Verona, 1960-2003: 4(1981): 342, 347, fig. 65.
1984
Chastel, André. Musca depicta. Milan, 1984: 16, 18 n. 15, 24, 25, repro.
1985
European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 45, repro.
1985
Sgarbi, Vittorio. Antonio del Crevalcore e la pittura ferrarese del Quattrocento a Bologna. Milan, 1985: 38, repro.
1987
Lucco, Mauro. “La Pittura rinascimentale del secondo Quattrocento nel Veneto occidentale.” In Federico Zeri, ed. La pittura in Italia. Il Quattrocento. 2 vols. Milan, 1987: 1:147.
1990
Marinelli, Sergio. “Verona.” In Mauro Lucco, ed. La pittura nel Veneto: il Quattrocento. Milan, 1990: 2:628, 632, 648 n. 17, fig. 756.
1991
Shaw, Keith V., and Theresa M. Boccia Shaw. “Francesco Benaglio and Piero della Francesca via Lorenzo Canozi da Lendinara.” Porticus 14-16 (1991-1993): 13-14, 19 nn. 11, 12, 20 n. 18, fig. 3.
1992
Partsch, Susanna. “Benaglio, Francesco.” In Allgemeines Künsler-Lexicon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker. 119 vols. Munich and Leipzig, 1992-2023: 8(1994):589, 590.
1993
Gagliardi, Jacques. La conquête de la peinture: L’Europe des ateliers du XIIIe au XVe siècle. Paris, 1993: 757, fig. 964.
1994
Bellosi, Luciano. “Un indagine su Domenico Morone (e su Francesco Benaglio).” In Pierre Rosenberg, Cécile Scailliérz, and Dominique Thiébaut. Hommage à Michel Laclotte. Études sur la peinture du Moyen Age et de la Renaissance. Milan and Paris, 1994: 293, 295, 302 n. 39, fig. 305.
1995
De Marchi, Andrea. “Un punto fermo per Angelo Zoppo ‘ignobile pittore.’” Bulletin du Musée Hongrois des Beaux-Arts 82 (1995): 73 n. 9.
1996
Fredericksen, Burton B., ed., with the assistance of Julia I. Armstrong and Doris A. Mendenhall. Index of Paintings Sold in the British Isles During the Nineteenth Century. 4 vols. Santa Barbara, CA, 1988: 1:295.
1996
Lippincott, Kristen. "Francesco Benaglio." In Jane Turner, ed. The Dictionary of Art. 34 vols. New York and London, 1996: 3:699.
1999
Agosti, Giovanni. “Piccole osservazioni nell’area dello Squarcione.” In Alberta De Nicolò Salmazo, ed. Francesco Squarcione “pictorium gymnasiarcha singularis”. Padua, 1999: 60.
2001
Levi d’Ancona, Mirella. Lo zoo del Rinascimento. Il significato degli animali nella pittura italiana dal XIV al XVI secolo. Lucca, 2001: 163, figs. 95, 95a.
2002
Deceptions and Illusions: Five Centuries of Trompe l'Oeil Painting. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2002-2003: no. 25.
2003
Boskovits, Miklós, and David Alan Brown, et al. Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 2003: 101-105, color repro.
2006
Rossi, Francesca. “Frammenti di una generazione perduta, nei dintorni di Francesco Benaglio.” In Sergio Marinelli and Paola Marini, eds. Mantegna e le Arti a Verona 1450-1500. Exh. cat. Palazzo della Gran Guardia, Verona, 2006: 107, 110.

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