1939.2 Il Garofalo, Madonna and Child and St. Jerome | DMA Staging Content Management System

GENERAL DESCRIPTION

This minute and exquisitely painted panel by Benvenuto Tisi, called Garofalo and known as one of the leading artists working in Ferrara in the first half of the 16th century, was likely intended for private devotion. Here, a stately Virgin and Child is joined by the rugged figure of Saint Jerome. The hermit saint is surrounded by his attributes: the lion that he tamed after removing a thorn from its paw, and a copy of the Bible, which Jerome translated into Latin. Although still a young child, Christ points at a passage in the text, possibly foreshadowing his Passion, an allusion reinforced by Jerome’s hand resting on a skull. The bold colours and Jerome’s contorted but elegant pose are hallmarks of Mannerism, while behind the figures, a carefully painted landscape with a church and a farmyard relates to the everyday life of the contemporary world.

Excerpt from

Julien Domercq, Label text (1939.2), 2020

NOTES

I think that scanning the verso of the seven photographs sent to scholars for authentication would be interesting for the public to see. (All photos located in the object file.)

General Description sources:

Anne Bromberg, DMA research document, 1987.
Gail Davitt, DMA biographical essays, 1986-87.
DMA Label copy, May 2015.

Added foreign language title, Madonna con il Bambino e San Girolamo.

Added sources to published references and completed information for sources already entered in the bibliographic module.

--Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, Volume 2, XV-XVI Century (London, 1968), 78, fig. 187.

--Giuseppe Mazzariol, Il Garofalo, Benevenuto Tisi.(Comune di Rovigo, 1960), 23. (Assigns the date as 1520)

--Anna Maria Fioravanti Baraldi, Benvenuto Tisi da Garofalo tra Rinascimento e Manierismo: contributo alla catalogazione delle opere dell’artista dal 1512 al 1550, (Ferrara, Italy: Arti Grafiche, 1977), 70-156.

Added Label copy from "Paintings from the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts Storage," University Gallery, Southern Methodist University, November 21- December 26, 1976:

Garofalo, a gifted and prolific Ferrarese eclectic, collaborated with Dosso Dossi, and was influenced by Raphael and Michelangelo. In this fine painting, St. Jerome is shown with the lion and skull, symbols of his years in the wilderness, while the child Jesus, with a wisdom beyond his years, points to the book, Jerome's Latin translation of the Bible, known as the vulgate.

This painting is catalogued among Garofalo's works by Bernard Berenson in his "Italian Pictures of the Renaissance," and by B. B. Fredrickson and Federico Zeri in "Census of Pre-19th Century Italian Painting in North American Public Collections."

Added current label to TMS (photographed in the gallery May 11, 2015:

The Christ child, seated on Mary's lap, points to a Bible held by St. Jerome and appears to engage the scholar in a theological discussion. St. Jerome in identified by his traditional attributes: a skull and a lion, a reference to a medieval tale in which Jerome draws a thorn from a lion's paw. The cloth of honor against which the holy figures are seated partially obscures a meticulously described landscape.

Removed TMS object tag because rule exists.

Add object number to Piction asset.

Added artist geography-

Artist born (geography) Ferrara (Italy)

Artist active (geography) Ferrara (Italy)

Object geography- produced in Italy?

How to make use of this without a contituent field in Piction?

"An Exhibition of Italian Paintings from The Kress Collection," April 16- May 10, 1933. exhibition ID: 10102

12710873: UMO 12051753: UMO.

This work was not included in this show but it contains essays on many of his contemporaries and gives a better understanding of how important Samuel H. Kress' collection and eventual donations were for American art institutions.

Teaching ideas source: Drawn from- DMA teaching resources document, n.d., Education files; Ken Kelsey, Gail Davitt, Mary Ann Allday, Barbara Barrett, and Troy Smythe, Art of Europe at the Dallas Museum of Art, Teaching packet (Dallas Museum of Art), 1994.

Provenance (not public)

Before 1936: Count Alessandro Contini-Bonacossi, Florence and Rome [1]

1936: Samuel H. Kress

From 1939: Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation [2]

Notes:

This primary sources for this provenance are Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, Volume 2, XV-XVI Century (London, 1968), 78, and Anna Maria Fioravanti Baraldi, Il Garofalo : Benvenuto Tisi, pittore (c. 1476-1559) : catalogo generale, (Rimini, Italy: Luisè, 1993), 231-232.

[1] This owner is recorded in Museum documents as Contini Bonacossi. His title and first name are provided in the provenances of other Renaissance paintings gifted in the mid-1930s by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

[2] The name of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, founded in 1933, was changed to the Dallas Museum of Art in 1983.

5/13/2020- Covid-19 closure; Online sprint devoted to European galleries; Julien wrote or re-wrote 9 European object labels and has asked Emily Schiller to try to make this content available online by 5/17/2020. As with most content on the online collection, this text has not been edited by Queta. This text is the original draft from Julien and will be edited for interpretation standards and routed as a wall label in Fall 2020.

Online content prior to 5/13/2020:

Born in Ferrara, a town thirty miles north of Bologna, Garofalo is associated with a group of Renaissance artists now known as the Ferrarese School. The strongest influence on his painting was the High Renaissance art of Michelangelo Buonarroti and Raphael, but he also collaborated on several projects with fellow Ferrarese painters, Dosso and Battista Dossi. Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574), the author of the foundational text on art from this period, was a personal acquaintance of Garofalo and the main source for the artist's biography. A good draftsman and rich colorist who used both oil and tempera, Garofalo is noted particularly for his landscape backgrounds. His frescoes and oil paintings have decorated many churches and palaces in Ferrara.

Madonna and Child and St. Jerome exemplifies a traditional Renaissance religious group, comparable to scenes of the Holy Family by Raphael. The attention to volume and proportions in the main figures, the dramatic landscape, combined with the idealized image of the Virgin and the classical setting, reflect the aesthetics of Christian humanism. High Renaissance artists visualized religious scenes set within illusionistic spaces containing three-dimensional, realistic figures. Two landscapes help focus attention on the central trio. The arrangement and drapery of Mary and St. Jerome create a subtle pyramid around the center of the composition where the infant Jesus sits. St. Jerome is shown with a Bible, which he devoted his life to translating from Hebrew to Latin. His left hand rests on a skull just over the face of a lion—a reference to a medieval tale in which Jerome draws a thorn from a lion's paw.

Adapted from

Anne Bromberg, DMA unpublished material, 1987.
Gail Davitt, DMA unpublished material, 1986-87.
DMA Label copy, 2015.

Catalogue essays

Artist/designers

Garofalo (Italian, 1481-1559)

Cultures

Geography

Place of origin: Italy (nation): TGN: 1000080

Process/materials

Oil on panel

Historical periods

Renaissance (Italy, c. 1300- c. 1530)

Individuals

Virgin Mary

Jesus Christ

Saint Jerome (Christianity)

Buonarotti, Michelangelo

Raphael

Vasari, Giogrio

Subject terms

drapery

halo

Skull (symbolism in Western art)

landscape

foreground

background

lion

elderly

beard

idealized

Christianity

sitting

bench

barefoot

shading

illusionistic

atmospheric perspective

balance

Humanism

column

Bible

mothers

infants

Ferrarese

RELATED OBJECTS

PROVENANCE

AUDIO ASSETS

Justin Greenlee, McDermott Education Intern for Learning Partnerships with Schools and the Community, DMA; "Cleaning a Lion's Teeth: Garofalo and the Italian Masters," Gallery talk, 2010. 13309775: UMO

Object number added to Piction

VIDEO ASSETS

IMAGE ASSETS

WEB RESOURCES

Sixteenth-Century Painting in Emilia-Romagna~Read about the art historical importance of Ferrara and other cities in the region.
Raphael, The Madonna of the Meadow (1505-1506)~Look at an example of Raphael's depictions of the Holy Family from the High Renaissance and check out the additional resources provided by Google Arts & Culture.

ARCHIVAL RESOURCES

Digitized materials for "Religious Art in the Western World" (Archives exhibition ID# 10921). Exhibition catalogue, UMO 12711793. Other documents related to the exhibition- UMO 12056345; UMO 12056352; UMO 12056359; UMO 12056366; UMO 12056373; UMO 12056380; UMO 12056387; UMO 12056394; UMO 12056401; UMO 12056408; (more files on Piction related to this exhibition. I stopped copying the UMO numbers because I did not know if necessary. Update- since the exhibition is related to this object in TMS, tags or Piction data entry should not be needed. 1/17/2017)

FUN FACTS

According to Giorgio Vasari, Garofalo was blind for several years before his death in 1559. Other research suggests that his vision had been impaired most of his life after losing sight in one eye as a young man.
Garofalo, also known as Benevenuto di Piero Tisi, signed his works with variations of his name including Benvegnu, Benvenuto, and Benvenutus. He also is known to have substituted a small twig with a carnation blossom as a monogram.
Seven of the leading experts in Renaissance art were consulted about the attribution of this work when it was added to the collection in 1939. Each was sent a black and white photograph of the painting and asked to provide their opinion as to its creator and date. The authenticity of Garofalo's Madonna and Child and St. Jerome was supported by Dr. Frederick Francis Mason Perkins, Prof. Roberto Longhi, Prof. Adolfo Venturi, Prof. William Suida, Prof. Giuseppe Fiocco, Dr. Raimond van Marle, and Bernard Berenson.

TEACHING IDEAS

TI Garofalo, Madonna and Child and St. Jerome

RULES

Apply to objects where number equals 1939.2

General Description

This minute and exquisitely painted panel by Benvenuto Tisi, called Garofalo and known as one of the leading artists working in Ferrara in the first half of the 16th century, was likely intended for private devotion. Here, a stately Virgin and Child is joined by the rugged figure of Saint Jerome. The hermit saint is surrounded by his attributes: the lion that he tamed after removing a thorn from its paw, and a copy of the Bible, which Jerome translated into Latin. Although still a young child, Christ points at a passage in the text, possibly foreshadowing his Passion, an allusion reinforced by Jerome’s hand resting on a skull. The bold colours and Jerome’s contorted but elegant pose are hallmarks of Mannerism, while behind the figures, a carefully painted landscape with a church and a farmyard relates to the everyday life of the contemporary world.

Excerpt from

Julien Domercq, Label text (1939.2), 2020

Fun Facts

According to Giorgio Vasari, Garofalo was blind for several years before his death in 1559. Other research suggests that his vision had been impaired most of his life after losing sight in one eye as a young man.
Garofalo, also known as Benevenuto di Piero Tisi, signed his works with variations of his name including Benvegnu, Benvenuto, and Benvenutus. He also is known to have substituted a small twig with a carnation blossom as a monogram.
Seven of the leading experts in Renaissance art were consulted about the attribution of this work when it was added to the collection in 1939. Each was sent a black and white photograph of the painting and asked to provide their opinion as to its creator and date. The authenticity of Garofalo's Madonna and Child and St. Jerome was supported by Dr. Frederick Francis Mason Perkins, Prof. Roberto Longhi, Prof. Adolfo Venturi, Prof. William Suida, Prof. Giuseppe Fiocco, Dr. Raimond van Marle, and Bernard Berenson.

Archival Resources

Digitized materials for "Religious Art in the Western World" (Archives exhibition ID# 10921). Exhibition catalogue, UMO 12711793. Other documents related to the exhibition- UMO 12056345; UMO 12056352; UMO 12056359; UMO 12056366; UMO 12056373; UMO 12056380; UMO 12056387; UMO 12056394; UMO 12056401; UMO 12056408; (more files on Piction related to this exhibition. I stopped copying the UMO numbers because I did not know if necessary. Update- since the exhibition is related to this object in TMS, tags or Piction data entry should not be needed. 1/17/2017)

Web Resources

Sixteenth-Century Painting in Emilia-Romagna~Read about the art historical importance of Ferrara and other cities in the region.
Raphael, The Madonna of the Meadow (1505-1506)~Look at an example of Raphael's depictions of the Holy Family from the High Renaissance and check out the additional resources provided by Google Arts & Culture.

Notes

I think that scanning the verso of the seven photographs sent to scholars for authentication would be interesting for the public to see. (All photos located in the object file.)

General Description sources:

Anne Bromberg, DMA research document, 1987.
Gail Davitt, DMA biographical essays, 1986-87.
DMA Label copy, May 2015.