Girolamo Savoldo

Girolamo Savoldo, also called Girolamo da Brescia (c. 1480-1485 – after 1548) was an Italian High Renaissance painter active mostly in Venice, although he also worked in other cities in northern Italy. He is noted for his subtle use of color and chiaroscuro, and the sober realism of his works, which are mostly religious subjects, with a few portraits, which are given interest by their accessories or settings, "some even look like extracts from larger narratives".

About 40 paintings are known in all, six of them portraits; only a handful of drawings are known. He was highly regarded in his own lifetime, and several repetitions of works were commissioned, and copies done by others. But he slipped from general awareness, and many of his works were assigned to more famous artists, especially Giorgione, by the art trade. Awareness of him revived in the 19th century, though the dating of many paintings remains controversial among specialists.

Savoldo was born in Brescia, but little is known about his early years. Some sources claim he was known as Girolamo Bresciano. By 1506 he was in Parma, and by 1508 he had joined the Florentine painter’s guild. In this period he finished the Rest at the Flight from Egypt (Augsburg), the Elijah Harassed by a Crow (National Gallery of Art, Washington), and a Deposition.

In 1515 he painted the Portrait of a Clad Warrior, traditionally identified with Gaston of Foix. Also from the same period is the Torment of St. Anthony. In this work, which is in the Timken Museum of Art, Savoldo shows St. Anthony with his hands clasped in prayer, fleeing from a hellish vision into a daylight, pastoral landscape. Like other northern Italian painters of the time, Savoldo was interested in Flemish painting, particularly the nightmarish monsters of the Flemish artist Hieronymus Bosch, which influenced his depiction of the tormentors in this work. As the saint flees, his hands point to a monastery, a reminder that he was the father of the monasticism movement. These works were appreciated by the commissioners from Venice, where Savoldo relocated before 1521.

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