Giovanni Baglione

(Rome circa 1566/68–1643)
The Penitent Saint Jerome,
oil on canvas, 118 x 158 cm, framed
Literature:
M. Nicolaci, Venezia (anti)caravaggesca. Itinerario critico in chiaroscuro (1620–1660), in: A. Cosma, Y. Primarosa (eds.), Barocco in chiaroscuro. Persistenze e rielaborazioni del caravaggismo nell’arte del Seicento. Roma, Napoli, Venezia 1630-1680, Milan 2020, pp. 339–340 (as Giovanni Baglione)

The present Penitent Saint Jerome is a recent and significant addition to the oeuvre of Giovanni Baglione dated to circa 1610–15.

The artist was trained in a late Mannerist ambient, influenced by Cavalier d’Arpino and Federico Barocci. Baglione was probably a pupil of the Florentine artist Francesco Morelli and received his first major commission between 1588 and 1590, as a member of the group of artists that frescoed the Scala Santa and the Vatican Library in Rome. Later Baglione painted some scenes from the life of the Madonna for Santa Maria dell’Orto in Rome, completed in 1598, and around 1600 he executed a fresco for the transcept of San Giovanni in Laterano. Already by the end of the 1590s, the new Roman naturalist tendencies, promoted by the cultural milieu created around Cardinal Sfondrato, can be seen in Baglione’s artworks.

From around 1600, Baglione’s style begins to reflect Caravaggio’s innovations, as demonstrated by the celebrated two versions of Divine Love Overcoming Profane Love, both painted for Cardinal Benedetto Giustiniani between 1602 and 1603, now in the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, Palazzo Barberini, Rome (inv. no. 1268) and in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (inv. no. 381). In 1603 the famous libel suit brought by Baglione against Caravaggio and his close circle took place, which also marked the artist’s progressive detachment from the Caravaggesque style. In 1606, Caravaggio’s flight from Rome and Baglione’s election as "Principe" of the Accademia di San Luca marked the latter’s definitive artistic consecration.

Baglione’s mature works, such as the present painting, are characterised by an eclectic style, combining Emilian and Tuscan influences together with the novelties of Roman naturalism. Here, the painter is also influenced by Venetian painting, in particular by Girolamo Savoldo, which Baglione encountered both through paintings at the time conserved in the Roman collections and also during a stay in Venice in 1614. The present work can be compared to Baglione’s Saint Peter now in the Galleria Sabauda, Turin (inv. no. 797), where the pictorial plane is also dominated by a large figure.

The historical provenance of this painting is not known at present. However, at least two written sources record works with the same subject attributed to Giovanni Baglione. The first one is an inventory of Palazzo Lancellotti in Rome, drawn up on 15 October 1640, which mentions a ‘Saint Jerome by Baglione with a gilded frame’ that belonged to the family until the end of the eighteenth century and was then dispersed (P. Cavazzini, Palazzo Lancellotti ai Coronari, Rome 1998, pp. 160, 196). The second one is mentioned in Domenico Montelatici’s book on "Villa Borghese fuori di Porta Pinciana" published in 1700, in which a ‘Saint Jerome kneeling in front of the Crucifix as a penitent hitting his chest with a stone’ (p. 221). In addition, the detailed inventory of the painter’s possessions bequeathed to his second wife and his son, lists three paintings depicting Saint Jerome, with differing dimensions (M. G. Aurigemma, Del Cavalier Baglione, in: Storia dell’arte, no. 80, 1994, p. 37).