Workshop of Sandro Botticelli

Exhibited by Flavio Gianassi - FG Fine Art Ltd

Material Oil on panel

Dimensions 36 x 26.5 cm

Place of Creation Florence

Price no

Status Vetted

About the Work

This small devotional panel records a deeply intimate and spiritual moment. The subject is based on a letter addressed to Pope Damasus in the fourth century, describing the last moments before Jerome’s death in 420 A.D., published in Florence in 1490 and must have provided inspiration for Botticelli. The painting’s scale and subject were perfectly suited to private devotion and Botticelli and his studio produced a small number of replicas for wealthy patrons. The prime version, considered to be by Botticelli himself, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and originally belonged to the Florentine wool merchant Francesco del Pugliese (c.1448-1519), a supporter of the radical preacher Savonarola and opponent of the ruling Medici family.

The closeness between that picture and the present panel is undeniable and, as Everett Fahy observed, they must be based on the same cartoon, which Botticelli would have preserved in his workshop for the purpose of producing exact replicas. Our painting, was in the Botticelli Drawings exhibition at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, curated by Furio Rinaldi. In that occasion the infrared showing the preparatory drawing for this painting was published for the first time, offering a rare glimpse into the artist's creative process and highlighting the foundational role of drawing in his work. In this context, the infrared picture reveals a foundation of assured underdrawings, crafted with vigorous brushwork employing a fluid medium. This robust underlayer excludes any indication of transferred outlines from a preliminary sketch, or a cartoon, suggesting its use in maintaining the integrity of the original scale and arrangement. A contemporary drawing after the Metropolitan Museum composition is in the Robert Lehman Collection.

The present panel is one of three known replicas ascribed to Botticelli’s workshop: the other two were in a Genoese private collection (formerly in Palazzo Balbi) and in Arthur Kay’s collection in Edinburgh. A panel depicting the Communion of Saint Jerome was recorded in a 1492 inventory with six small paintings in the camera of Lorenzo de’ Medici at the Palazzo Medici.

This picture has an exceptional provenance, tracing back to one of its earliest known owners, Sir Wil liam Neville Abdy (1844-1910). In 1911, his entire collection was sold at auction at Christie’s, a sale that was pivotal in dispersing some of the most remarkable pieces of Renaissance art. Among the highlights of this auction were Botticelli’s Nativity, which is now at the Columbia Museum of Art, and The Three Miracles of Saint Zenobius, currently on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. At the Neville Abdy sale this painting of The Last Communion of Saint Jerome was purchased for the considerable sum of £588 by Robert and Evelyn Benson, daughter of the notable collector Robert Holford. The Benson collection was later purchased en bloc by the dealer Joseph Duveen and subsequently dispersed.

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Provenance

London and Dorking, Surrey, Sir William Neville Abdy, 2nd Baronet, by 1874
His posthumous sale, London, Christie’s, 5 May 1911, lot 90
London, and Buckhurst Park, Sussex, Robert and Evelyn Benson
London, Joseph Duveen, by circa 1927
London, Christie’s, 25 April 2001, lot 106
New York, Sotheby’s, 20 May 2021, lot 28

Literature

H. Ulmann, Sandro Botticelli, Munich 1893, p. 72
H. P. Horne, Alessandro Filipepi commonly called Sandro Botticelli, London 1908, vol. I, p. 174
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
W. van Bode, Sandro Botticelli, Berlin 1921 p. 158
Y. Yashiro, Sandro Botticelli, London 1925, vol. 1, p. 210
R. van Marle, The Italian Schools of Paintings, vol. XII, The Hague 1931, p. 160
R. W. Lightbown, Sandro Botticelli, Berkeley 1978, vol. II, p. 87
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
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
C. Caneva, Botticelli: Catalogo Completo dei Dipinti, Florence 1990, p. 122, under cat. no. 64
A. F. Tempesti, The Robert Lehman Collection. Vol. 5, Italian Fifteenth- to Seventeenth-Century Drawings. New York 1991, p. 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, exhibition catalogue, Rome 2011, p. 206
F. Rinaldi, Botticelli Drawings, San Francisco 2023, pp. 220, 222-223

EXHIBITIONS
San Francisco, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Legion of Honor, Botticelli Drawings, 19 November 2023 - 11 February 2024