Saint Jerome Praying in a Landscape. 1550–60 Attributed to Niccolò dell' Abate Italian This expressive, highly finished composition of strongly inflected 'chiaroscuro' portrays a muscular nude figure of Saint Jerome seated within a cave, and surrounded by his various attributes: the lion, the cardinal's hat, the crucifix, the human skull of the memento mori, and the stones of self-mortification. Behind the cave, a luscious landscape with Antique-style buildings, seen as if far in the distance, is sketched almost exclusively with the brush and white gouache in the upper left of the composition.
Saint Jerome Praying in a Landscape. 1550–60 Attributed to Niccolò dell' Abate Italian This expressive, highly finished composition of strongly inflected 'chiaroscuro' portrays a muscular nude figure of Saint Jerome seated within a cave, and surrounded by his various attributes: the lion, the cardinal's hat, the crucifix, the human skull of the memento mori, and the stones of self-mortification. Behind the cave, a luscious landscape with Antique-style buildings, seen as if far in the distance, is sketched almost exclusively with the brush and white gouache in the upper left of the composition. The pen and ink with wash medium is handled with great technical virtuosity, and the effects of light and shadow seem exquisitely atmospheric on the hair and beard of the saint, on the trees, and on the columns of the buildings. There, the artist's application of the white gouache with the brush seems particularly dazzling for its painterly attribution of this drawing to the Emilian Mannerist, Niccolò dell'Abate (1512-1571), was tentatively proposed by Carmen C. Bambach, shortly after its acquisition as by an anonymous Emilian 16th century artist. The powerful muscularity of the figure of Saint Jerome, with large hands showing a Michelangelesque bent at the wrist, the somewhat exaggerated knobbliness of the torso, as well as the robust, parallel-hatched application of the white gouache highlights on the figure, and the atmospheric, ineffably painted landscape, all confirm that an attribution to Niccolò dell'Abate is most probably correct. The muscular, figural type of the elderly Saint Jerome is exactly comparable to Niccolo's mature, bearded, long-haired male figures (Kupferstichkabinett inv. KDZ 22194, Berlin; Devonshire Collection inv. 131 [Jaffé cat. no. 437], Chatsworth; British Museum, London; Yvonne Tan Bunzl, 1976 [Photo Archive of the Department of Drawings and Prints]). The controlled execution of the white gouache highlights applied with very stark
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