The Art Institute of Chicago

Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin and ChildAuthor(s): Larry J. FeinbergSource: Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies, Vol. 34, No. 1, Notable Acquisitions at theArt Institute of Chicago (2008), pp. 58-59Published by: The Art Institute of ChicagoStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20205587 .

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Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin and Child

c. 1535

Girolamo Sellari, called Girolamo da Carpi (Italian, c. 1501-1556)

Oil on panel, arched at top; 47 x 34 cm (18 Vi x 13 3/g in.)

RESTRICTED GIFT OF THE OLD MASTERS SOCIETY, 2007.246

GIROLAMO DA CARPI was one of the leading

painters in sixteenth-century Ferrara, a major artistic center

in the Renaissance. Although he worked primarily at the

court of the ruling Este family, he was more peripatetic and artistically adventurous than many of his cohorts. He

visited Rome in the early 1520s, studying the works of the

recently deceased Raphael and of his followers, notably Giulio Romano. He profoundly assimilated Giulio's heroic

style, and during later excursions to Bologna and Parma, he

picked up the graceful idiom of the brilliant young painter

Parmigianino, combining these influences in a manner

that was wholly his own. Admiring his sophisticated

compositions, the Este came to favor him, commissioning

numerous projects?paintings, sculpture, and architecture?

and naming him keeper of their tapestry collection. This

beautiful, well-preserved picture bears the imprint of all of

Girolamo's experiences and was given

a place of honor at the

Este court; the patrons displayed Saint Luke Drawing the

Virgin and Child in the grand oratory chapel of their palace, the Palazzo Vecchio, today Ferrara's city hall.

The subject and composition are based on a northern

European work that the artist encountered at the Este

court?a tapestry version of the fifteenth-century Flemish

artist Rogier van der Weyden's famous paintings of Saint

Luke Drawing the Virgin and Child. From Rogier's

tapestry design, Girolamo not only appropriated the poses and placement of the primary figures, but also recreated the

complex and segmented spatial recession. The Este would

no doubt have been very pleased with his luminous revision

of one of their most valued possessions.

The provenance of this painting is extraordinary. The

picture was probably created around 1535 for a member of

the Este family, likely Duke Ercole II or his brother, Cardinal

Ippolito II (the sons of the infamous Lucrezia Borgia). It is

first recorded in the possession of Lucrezia d'Est?, Duchess

of Urbino, who was the daughter of Ercole II and Rene?

of France. Because of her enmity toward her husband and

family, Lucrezia bequeathed her entire picture collection

to Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini, the nephew of Pope Clement VIII. The painting subsequently passed through the Aldobrandini family to the noble Pamphili clan; then

to the eminent Grosvenors (later dukes of Westminster); and then to Alfred de Rothschild, who bequeathed it to

his illegitimate daughter, Almina, whose husband, the Earl

of Carnarvon, excavated the tomb of the boy pharaoh Tutankhamen at Luxor.

LARRY J. FEINBERG

5?

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