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Date : 1476
Material : Tempera on canvas
Acquisition : (1933)
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European Painting
Painting
Area related
Siena (Italy)
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| Description |  |
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Matteo di Giovanni, possibly the significant Sienese painter of the second half of the fifteenth century, produced a number of major altarpieces. His works combine narrative clarity with formal restraint, yielding a style well-suited to the representation of historical events. Matteo took advantage of recent developments in Florentine painting (such as the use of one-point perspective in architecture), creating poetic works infused with innocence and mild theatricality. In this painting, these qualities are exemplified by the charming, young Dominican friar who witnesses St. Augustine's vision, which had occurred as Augustine was writing St. Jerome's eulogy.
These panels were components of an altarpiece commissioned in 1476 by the Placidi family for a chapel dedicated to St. Jerome in the church of San Domenico at Siena. The central element of that altarpiece, a "Virgin and Child Enthroned with Angels and Saints Jerome and John the Baptist", is still at San Domenico. Other components are scattered among the Pinacoteca Nazionale of Siena, thee Museum in Altenburg (Germany), a private collection, and the Art Institute.
St. Jerome and St. Augustine were prominent theologians in late antiquity, and played important roles in defending the church against various heresies. Jerome retired to Bethlehem, in the Holy Land, while Augustine was Bishop of Hippo (presently in Algeria). A correspondence between the two saints has been preserved.
St. Jerome, who later translated the Hebrew Bible into Latin, became a hermit after having a vision in which Christ reproved him for his secular interests. According to the apocryphal, thirteenth-century "Golden Legend", the saint even dreamed about being whipped for his impiety. Matteo di Giovanni equates Jerome's renunciation of worldly concerns with a second baptism: placing a baptismal font in the center background, he includes an explicit scene of baptism in a sculptural relief over the door.
The artist seems to have derived the composition "The Dream of Saint Jerome" from the famous "Flagellation" by Piero della Francesca (1423/1424-1492), now in the Ducal Palace at Urbino; Matteo had earlier contributed several panels to the altarpiece in Borgo Sansepolcro, of which Piero's celebrated painting had been the central component.
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