FG FINE ART LTD
Sandro Botticelli
workshop of
Florence, 1445-15105
The panel illustrating Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata encompasses several distinctive elements of Cenni di Francesco’s figurative style. The episode is recounted with an abundance of detail, a hallmark of this artist. The depiction of La Verna’s rugged and remote landscape occupies a significant portion of the composition. The artist meticulously portrays the architecture of two convents in the background, the trees, the crevices in the rocks, and even the grain on a wooden plank laid as a pathway along the precipice. The warm tonalities of the colour palette are bathed in the light that falls upon the rocks, the tunic, and the serene, almost smiling countenance of Saint Francis.
The Last Communion of Saint Jerome, ca. 1495
Oil on panel, 36 x 26.5 cm
Provenance
Sir William Neville Abdy, 2nd Bt. (1844-1910), London and Dorking, Surrey, by 1874
His posthumous sale, London, Christie’s, 5 May 1911, lot 90
There acquired by Robert Benson (1850-1929) and Evelyn Benson (née Holford) (1856-1943) 16 South Street, Park Lane, London, and Buckhurst Park, Sussex
From whom probably acquired by Joseph Duveen, by circa 1927
London, Christie’s, 25 April 2001, lot 106
New York, private collection
New York, Sotheby’s, 20 May 2021, lot 28
Exhibitions
San Francisco, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Legion of Honor, Botticelli Drawings, November 19, 2023 - February 11, 2024
Bibliography
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
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, exhibition catalogue, San Francisco 2023, pp. 220, 222-223
This small devotional panel showing The Last Communion of Saint Jerome records a deeply intimate and spiritual moment. Jerome, the fourth-century scholar known for having translated the Bible from Greek into Latin, was born in Rome but chose to escape the city’s worldly temptations and live as a hermit in the desert outside Bethlehem. 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. . The text was published in Florence in 1490 and must have provided inspiration for Botticelli in devising this sophisticated composition. Understandably, 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 (fig. 1), 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.
1. Sandro Botticelli, The Last Communion of Saint Jerome, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
2. Workshop of Sandro Botticelli, The Last Communion of Saint Jerome, infrared reflectography
3. Workshop of Sandro Botticelli, The Last Communion of Saint Jerome, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
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 . As the former owner of the painting Robert Benson observed in the 1914 catalogue of his collection: “The differences between the two are millimetric, e.g., the knobs on the window frames, the candlestick where it crosses the line of the back of the priest, and the white sleeve of this same priest” . 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 (fig. 2). 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 Met, 1975.1.280) (fig. 3).
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 Il Magnifico (Lorenzo de’ Medici) at the Palazzo Medici in via Larga. Though that painting is not specifically ascribed to Botticelli, the inventory does attest to the popularity of this deeply religious subject among Florence’s leading intellectuals and patrons towards the end of the fifteenth century. Indeed, the Florentine painter Bartolomeo di Giovanni (active c. 1458-1501) also had recourse to Botticelli’s composition for a panel in the Pallavicini collection, Rome, and for his own rendition of the subject in a predella today in the John G. Johnson Collection, Philadelphia.
This picture has an exceptional provenance, tracing back to one of its earliest known owners, Sir Wil liam Neville Abdy (1844-1910): a distinguished collector with a refined eye for Old Masters. Abdy’s collection included several notable works, including two masterpieces by Sandro Botticelli. Alongside these two renowned paintings, the collection also featured three works from Botticelli’s studio, one of which is our piece. In 1911, Sir William Neville Abdy’s 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 (lot 86), which is now at the Columbia Museum of Art, and The Three Miracles of Saint Zenobius (lot 87), currently on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. This rich history not only underscores the value of the painting in question but also emphasizes the critical role this auction played in reshaping public access to some of Botticelli’s finest works, ensuring their preservation and appreciation by modern audiences. At the Neville Abdy sale this painting of The Last Communion of Saint Jerome was purchased for the considerable sum of £588 by Robert (1850-1929) and Evelyn Benson (1856-1943), (16 South Street, Park Lane, London, and Buckhurst Park, Sussex) daughter of the notable collector Robert Holford as we can see from their inventory number 25 on the reverse of the panel. The Benson collection was later purchased en bloc by the dealer Joseph Duveen and subsequently dispersed.
A full fact sheet is available on request.
