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Gold-framed painting of a bleeding man with figures on either side

A light-skinned, gray-haired man in a pink robe stands in a rocky landscape. To his left is a small crucifix on a long post. The man’s expression is downcast. With his right hand he holds a rock to his bare chest. Blood flows down around the rock. A man on the right in a furry garment leans over a low boulder. On the left, a blond figure holds a green branch and a red heart shape. All three figures have golden halos. The shape of this painting is roughly semicircular, but with a point at the top center.

Gallery Text

Filippo Lippi was a celebrated painter and a lapsed Carmelite friar: in his Lives of the Artists, Giorgio Vasari claims that Cosimo de’ Medici once shut Filippo in his palace to force him to work rather than chase women. This painting was commissioned for the Carmelite church in the city of Prato, northwest of Florence, where the artist worked for more than a decade. Its remarkable landscape, a mountainous wilderness that plunges from the top right and divides behind Saint Jerome, who stands in a crevice at its center, brings together three hermit saints. Turning to face a bloodstained crucifix, a penitent Jerome beats his breast with a rock; his own blood spills onto the ground. Beside him are Saints Ansanus, who holds a palm leaf and a heart, and John the Baptist, who wears a hair shirt. Despite some vegetation, the landscape is hard and austere, itself a symbol of penance. Because of the abrasion of the paint surface, the vigorous underdrawing is visible in places.

Identification and Creation

Object Number
1963.111
People
Filippo Lippi, Italian (Florence, Italy c. 1406 - 1469 Spoleto, Italy)
Previously attributed to Fra Diamante, Italian (1430 - 1498)
Title
Saint Jerome in the Desert with Saints John the Baptist and Ansanus
Classification
Paintings
Work Type
painting
Date
c. 1455
Places
Creation Place: Europe, Italy, Tuscany, Florence
Culture
Italian
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/228321

Location

Location
Level 2, Room 2540, European Art, 13th–16th century, The Renaissance
View this object's location on our interactive map

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Tempera on panel
Dimensions
159.1 x 189.9 cm (62 5/8 x 74 3/4 in.)
framed: 175 x 204 cm (68 7/8 x 80 5/16 in.)

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
Dragoni Family Chapel, Church of the Carmine, Prato. Grissato Berti, Prato. Possibly W. Duncan, Scotland. [W. Ward], sold; to Charles Fairfax Murray, sold; to Edward W. Forbes, 1901, gift; to Fogg Art Museum, 1963

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of Edward W. Forbes to honor the memory of Richard Norton
Accession Year
1963
Object Number
1963.111
Division
European and American Art
Contact
am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu
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Publication History

  • Ferdinano Baldanzi, Delle pitture di Fra Filippo Lippi nel coro della cattedrale di Prato, I. Fr. Giachetti (Prato, Italy, 1835), pp. 52-53
  • Gaetano Milanesi, Le Opere di Giorgio Vasari, G. C. Sansoni, Editore (Florence, 1878), pp. 627, 641
  • Collection of Mediaeval and Renaissance Paintings, Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1919), pp. 59-61, no. 6
  • Lionello Venturi, Italian Paintings in America, E. Weyhe Gallery (New York, NY, 1933), Vol. II, plate 212, repr.
  • "Canvas is Found Work of Master: Painting 35 Years in Fogg Museum Possiby by Fra Filippo Lippi", Boston Herald (Boston, MA, January 27, 1939)
  • Edward Waldo Forbes, Yankee Visionary, Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge, MA, 1971), p. 16, repr. in b/w p. 17
  • Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA, 1972), p. 106
  • Herbert Friedmann, A Bestiary for Saint Jerome: Animal Symbolism in European Religious Art, Smithsonian Institution Press (Washington, D.C., 1980), p. 331
  • Eliot W. Rowlands, "Two Saints from the Workshop of Fra Filippo Lippi, and Their Companion Panels", Bulletin, Georgia Museum of Art (Athens, Georgia, 1990), pp. 12, 15, repr. as fig. 23
  • Edgar Peters Bowron, European Paintings Before 1900 in the Fogg Art Museum: A Summary Catalogue including Paintings in the Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 1990)
  • Jeffrey Ruda, Fra Filippo Lippi: Life and Work with a Complete Catalogue, Phaidon (London, 1993), pp. 452-453, cat. no. 54, repr. p. 453 as pl. 309.
  • Maria Pia Mannini, Filippo Lippi: catalogo completo (Florence, Italy, 1997), p. 122, no. 46, reproduced
  • Barnaby Nygren, "Puns, Polysemy & Interpretation in Filippo Lippi's 'Saint Jerome in the Desert with Saints John the Baptist & Ansanus'", Coming About... A Festschrift for John Shearman, Harvard University Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 2001), pp. 99-104, pp. 99-104, repr.
  • Carl Brandon Strehlke, Italian Paintings 1250-1450 in the John G. Johnson Collection and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia, PA, 2004), p. 113
  • Barnaby Nygren, "Una cosa che non e': Perspective and Humour in the Paintings of Filippo Lippo", Oxford Art Journal (2006), Vol. 29, No. 3, pp. 319-339, p. 9
  • Stephan Wolohojian and Alvin L. Clark, Jr., Harvard Art Museum/ Handbook, ed. Stephan Wolohojian, Harvard Art Museum (Cambridge, 2008), p. 59, repr.
  • Maria Pia Mannini and Cristina Gnoni Mavarelli, "Filippo et Filippino Lippi: la Renaissance a Prato", exh. cat., Silvana Editoriale (Milan, Italy, 2009), pp. 452-453, no. 54, repr. Pl. 309

Exhibition History

  • Loan Exhibition of Italian Primitive Paintings, Fogg Art Museum, 02/26/1915 - 03/18/1915
  • Edward Waldo Forbes: Yankee Visionary, Fogg Art Museum, 01/16/1971 - 02/22/1971
  • Filippo et Filippino Lippi: la Renaissance a Prato, Musée du Luxembourg, Paris, 02/25/2009 - 08/02/2009
  • 32Q: 2540 Renaissance, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 11/16/2014 - 01/01/2050

Subjects and Contexts

  • Google Art Project

Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of European and American Art at am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu