Master Paintings
Master Paintings
Property from a Distinguished Private Collection
Attributed to Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi, called Botticelli, and Studio
The Last Communion of Saint Jerome
Auction Closed
May 20, 03:42 PM GMT
Estimate
150,000 - 200,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
Property from a Distinguished Private Collection
Attributed to Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi, called Botticelli, and Studio
Florence 1445 - 1510
The Last Communion of Saint Jerome
oil on panel
panel: 14 ⅛ by 10 ½ in.; 36 by 26.5 cm.
framed: 20 ½ by 16 ½ in.; 52.1 by 41.9 cm.
His sale, London, Christie's, 5 May 1911 (as school of Botticelli);
There acquired by Robert Benson (1850-1929) and Evelyn Benson, London and Buckhurst Park (inv. no. 25 on reverse of the panel);
From whom probably acquired by Duveen, by circa 1927;
Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 25 April 2001, lot 106 (as Workshop of Botticelli);
There acquired by the present collector.
H.P. Horne, Alessandro Filipepi commonly called Sandro Botticelli, London 1908, vol. I, p. 174 (as a period copy);
R.L. Douglas, in J.A. Crowe and G.B. Cavalcaselle, A History of Painting in Italy: Umbria, Florence and Siena from the Second to the Sixteenth Century, vol. IV, London 1911, p. 270, note 4;
Catalogue of Italian Pictures at 16, South Street, Park Lane, London and Buckhurst in Sussex collected by Robert and Evelyn Benson, London 1914, pp. 47-48, no. 25 (as Sandro Botticelli);
W. van Bode, Sandro Botticelli, Berlin 1921 p. 158 (as a period copy);
Y. Yashiro, Sandro Botticelli, London 1925, vol. 1, p. 210 (as the best of the period copies known);
R. van Marle, The Italian Schools of Paintings, vol. XII, The Hague 1931, p. 160;
R. W. Lightbown, Sandro Botticelli, London 1978, vol. II, p. 87 (as a contemporary replica);
F. Zeri and E. Gardner, Italian Paintings, A Catalogue of the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Florentine School, New York 1971, p. 159 (as one of 'a number of more or less contemporary copies and versions');
G. Mandel, L'opera completa del Botticelli, Milan 1978, p. 104, under cat. no. 122;
N. Pons, Botticelli: Catalogo completo, Milan 1989, p. 86, under cat. no. 118 (as a contemporary replica);
C. Caneva, Botticelli: Catalogo Completo dei Dipinti, Florence 1990, p. 122, under cat. no. 64 (as a contemporary replica);
A.F. Tempesti. The Robert Lehman Collection. Vol. 5, Italian Fifteenth- to Seventeenth-Century Drawings. New York 1991, pp. 232, note 1;
J. Burke, Changing Patrons: Social Identity and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Florence, University Park, PA, 2004, p. 254, n. 112;
A. Cecchi in Filippino Lippi e Sandro Botticelli nella Firenze del ’400, exh. cat., Rome 2011, p. 206.
This small devotional panel of The Last Sacrament of Saint Jerome preserves one of the most beautiful and spiritual images made popular by Sandro Botticelli and his workshop in the 1490s. Several contemporary versions are known of this composition, the prime of which is today in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (inv. no. 14.462). The closeness between the present panel and the prime is undeniable, and Robert Benson, a former owner of this painting, rightly noted the remarkable uniformity in composition between the two works in his 1914 collection catalogue, writing "The differences between the two are millimetric, e.g., the knobs on the window frames, the candlestick where it crosses the line of the back of the priest, and the white sleeve of this same priest."
Also preserved in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a contemporary workshop drawing of the central figures of this composition, likely used by Botticelli as a record for replicas (inv. no. 1975.1.290).1 In addition to the two examples already discussed here, another is recorded in a private collection in Genoa and another formerly in the Kay Collection in London. It is believed that the example in the Metropolitan Museum of Art originally formed part of the collection of the wool merchant and patron Francesco del Pugliese, a devoutly religious man and staunch supporter of Savonarola and an enemy of the Medici,2 while a panel of the Communion of Saint Jerome was recorded as one of six small paintings in the camera of Lorenzo the Magnificent, as described in his 1492 inventory.3 While it is uncertain if that work was by Botticelli, what is made certain by this inventory is that such a subject would have already been popular during Lorenzo the Magnificent's lifetime.
The episode illustrated here may have arisen from the text of Devoto Transito del Glorioso Sancto Hieronymo, an Italian translation of a letter circulating in the 1490s in Florence that recorded the last moments of Saint Jerome's life. The letter is said to have been sent in 420 AD to Pope Damasus and is recorded in an Epistle by Eusebius of Caesarea. The elderly Saint Jerome is shown kneeling within the stark interior of a small hut made of straw. He is supported and surrounded by his fellow brethren as he struggles to receive communion for the last time. Though the setting behind him is evocative of an altarpiece, he kneels only in front of his simple bed on some white vestments, where he was likely lying before receiving the sacrament. Above the bed is a wall adorned with palm fronds, a crucifix, olive branches and his signature red cardinal's hat.
1. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/459478
2. It is recorded in his 1502 inventory as “unaltro Quadro dipintouj eltransito di sa[n] Girolamo dimano didecto Sandro” (another work in which it is shown the death of Saint Jerome by the hand of Sandro [Botticelli]”. Will of Francesco del Pugliese. February 28, 1502, published in H. Horne, “Botticelli’s Last Communion of S. Jerome,” in The Burlington Magazine, November 1915, vol. 28, pp. 44-46.
3. Cecci 2011, p. 206.