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©
Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, on loan with the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC)
Bartolomeo Montagna

Saint Jerome in the Desert

s.f
Oil on panel.
40 x 28.8 cm
Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, on deposit with the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC)
Inv. no.
290
(
1935.13
)
Not on display
  • Level 2 Permanent Collection
  • Level 1 Permanent Collection
  • Level 0 Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
  • Level -1 Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Level 2
Permanent Collection
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 13 15 16 17 18 22 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Recommended start of the visitClassical rooms
1 14th Century. Early Italian Painting 2 15th Century. German and Spanish Painting 3 15th Century. Early Netherlandish Painting 4 15th Century. Italian Painting 5 15th and 16th Centuries. Renaissance Portraiture 6 16th Century. Villahermosa Gallery 7 16th Century. Italian Painting 8 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 9 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 10 16th Century. Netherlandish Painting 11 Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassano and  El Greco 12 17th Century. Caravaggio and Baroque Painting 13 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 14 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 15 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 16 18th Century. Italian Painting 17 18th Century. Italian Painting 18 18th Century. Italian Painting 19 Classical rooms 20 Classical rooms 21 Classical rooms 22 18th Century. Italian Painting 23 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 24 18th Century. French and English Painting 25 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Scenes of Daily Life and Interiors 26 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 27 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Portrait 28 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 29 19th Century. European Painting. Goya and Romanticism  
Level 1
Permanent Collection
30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Postpop rooms Rodin room
30 18th and 19th Centuries. Transatlantic Relations 31 19th Century. American Landscape and Environmental Awareness 32 19th Century. American Landscape and Urban Life 33 Recovering the ligth. Restoration of Waterloo Bridge, by André Derain 34 20th Century. Expressionist Landscapes 35 20th Century. Expressionist Portraits 36 20th Century. The Language of the Body 37 20th Century. Urban unrest 38 20th Century. Flowers 39 20th Century. Pioneers of abstraction 40 20th Century. Popular flavor 41 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition I 42 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition II 43 20th Century. Abstract Utopias 44 20th Century. Dada and Surrealism 45 20th Century. Interwar Realisms 46 20th Century. American Abstraction I 48 20th Century. Post-ward American Art 49 20th Century. Post-ward European Figurative Art 50 20th Century. Informalisms 51 20th Century. Homo Ludens 52 20th Century. Pop Art 53 Postpop rooms: Ayako Rokakku 54 Postpop rooms: Ayako Rokakku 55 Postpop rooms: Ayako Rokakku 56 Postpop rooms: Ayako Rokakku Rodin Exhibition room
Level 0
Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
A B C D E F G H I J Hall Temporary exhibition rooms Access to Permanent Collection Entrance Access to Carmen Thyssen Collection Paseo del Prado Garden
A 17th and 18th Centuries. Old Masters B 19th Century. North American Landscape C 19th Century. French Naturalist Landscape D 19th Century. Impressionism E 19th Century. Monet and North American Impressionism F 19th Century. Gauguin and Postimpressionism G 19th and 20th Centuries. Neo Impressionism and its Wake H 20th Century. Early Avant-gardes I 20th Century. Between the Wars Painting. Cubism, Abstraction and Surrealism J 20th Century. North American Painting and Others • HALL
Level -1
Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Temporary exhibition rooms Conference room EducaThyssen Workshop
The oldest reference in the Museum’s archives to this painting is a text written in London in November 1932 by Tancred Borenius. In his concise report Borenius unreservedly attributed the panel to Bartolomeo Montagna, considering it a characteristic and genuine work and comparing the landscape to Venetian art of the day. The panel, which was acquired in 1935, retained this attribution in the catalogues of the Collection between 1937 and 1969, and in the later ones by Gertrude Borghero and Caroline de Watteville. Nonetheless, in his text on Italian Renaissance painting published in 1959, Bernard Berenson attributed the panel to the Venetian painter Benedetto Rusconi, known as Diana, who was a pupil of Lazzaro Bastiani (active between 1449 and 1512) and a follower of the Bellini.

Once again the Collection’s catalogues provide us with information on any cleaning and restoration work carried out on the panel. According to Rudolf Heinemann it was cleaned prior to 1969, revealing the figure of Saint Jerome in penitence in the middle-ground on the right, which was previously covered over by later re-painting; on the second occasion it was cleaned in or prior to 1989, given that Caroline de Watteville mentions a “recent cleaning”, which increased the work’s luminosity.

The artist evokes the life of Saint Jerome through two widely depicted episodes in that saint’s history. In the foreground the saint and Doctor of the Church is represented with his cardinal’s hat and with the lion (whom he tamed after extracting a thorn from its paw) peeping out from one side. Jerome holds the Latin version of the Bible, known as the Vulgate, which he translated from the original Greek and Hebrew texts. In a second scene that takes place in a wood we see him again but this time in penitence, kneeling and beating himself before a crucifix fixed into a tree trunk. The background and middle-ground depict a landscape with water and a city framed by mountains. The influence of Giovanni Bellini on this panel is obvious. Bellini depicted this subject, placing Jerome seated in the foreground on the right or left of a rocky setting, either holding or reading the Bible. The backgrounds of his versions are broad landscapes in which the outline of a city is to be seen in the distance.

In 1993 a painting appeared on the Italian art market that included an identical figure of Saint Jerome to the present one, also holding the book on his lap and set in a rocky landscape. On the right, however, was a broad landscape with a higher viewpoint than in the present panel.

Mar Borobia
15th Century - Italian paintingPaintingOilpanel
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Saint Jerome in the Desert. San Jerónimo en el desierto
Saint Jerome in the Desert
Bartolomeo Montagna

©

Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, on loan with the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC)

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Saint Jerome in the Desert. San Jerónimo en el desierto
Saint Jerome in the Desert
Bartolomeo Montagna

©

Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, on loan with the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC)

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