Michelangelo Anselmi, (Italian, 1492-1554), Saint Jerome Kneeling in a Landscape with an Angel, c. 1540

with partially obscured inscription PO/ PRIVATO (lower right)

42 x 38 inches.

Provenance: Paul H. Ganz Sotheby's New York, Old Master Paintings, June 4, 1987, Lot 17 Note: Michelangelo Anselmi worked alongside Correggio and Parmigianino on some of the most important artistic commissions in Renaissance Parma, including the decoration of the city's cathedral and the sanctuary of the Madonna della Steccata. Light-filled, charming, and tender, Anselmi's works make sober religious subjects compellingly accessible. In this vision of Saint Jerome, the artist presents the penitent saint as haggard but energized as he checks his Latin translation of the Greek and Hebrew Bible against a scroll coming from the light-drenched clouds of heaven. Jerome's symbolic lion, resting at his feet, joins the saint in looking intently heavenward. At the left, an appealingly disheveled cherub holds Jerome's text aloft. The cherub may be understood as a guardian angel; Jerome was the first Christian author to insist that all humans have their own individual divine protector. Anselmi's composition delightfully emphasizes that Jerome captured the full divine intent of the Greek and Hebrew original in his translation, countering Protestants who criticized the saint for occasionally mistranslating individual words. Anselmi's image of a sacred writer with scroll and angelic assistant was famously reprised by Caravaggio in his altarpiece of the Vision of St. Matthew for the Contarelli Chapel in Rome (1585-1590). (Professor Gary M. Radke)