Members' Research Report Archive

Carmelite Devotion, Patronage, and Art

Joseph Hammond, Research Associate, 2013–2014

Close to us, a bearded man with pale, peachy skin sits against a tall, narrow rock formation against a deep landscape in this vertical painting. The man has gray hair, deep-set eyes, high cheekbones, and his lips are downturned in his long beard. He sits with his knees and body angled to our left, but he turns to look up and to our right at a raven perched on the stone. His right elbow, to our left, is propped on a rocky ledge, and his head rests in that hand. His other veined, large hand rests on his knee. He wears a voluminous, long-sleeved, aquamarine-blue robe under a cloth tied around his neck. The cloth is rose-pink on the outside and appears to be lined with fleece on the underside. Near the top right corner of the composition, the raven leans toward the man holding a roll in its beak. The man’s bare feet rest on the dirt ground, and a couple of scrubby plants grow in the lower right corner of the painting, next to the rock on which the man sits. A river cuts through grassy land in the deep distance to the left of the rock formation. Several people gathered near the water’s edge point or look up into the sky, where a man kneeling in a chariot is drawn into a peach-toned cloud bank in the blue sky. Steep mountains on the horizon are icy blue.

Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo, Elijah Fed by the Raven, c. 1510, oil on panel transferred to canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.35

This year I published an article on the festivities accompanying the canonization of Saint Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, in which I question common assumptions about the correspondence between altar decorations and their dedications. In a second published article investigating the authorship, patronage, and liturgical context of Tintoretto’s Presentation of Christ in the Temple, I demonstrate that it is by Tintoretto and is a very carefully calibrated response to the liturgy at Compline on the feast of Candlemas. I presented research at the Renaissance Society of America conference, where I also chaired three panels. My project on the patronage of the Carmelites continues.

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Devotion at Santa Maria dei Carmini
Joseph Hammond, Research Associate, 2011–2012

Donor Portraiture in Venice and Jacopo Bellini at the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista
Joseph Hammond, Research Associate, 2012–2013

Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo
Elijah Fed by the Raven: c. 1510