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Lot Essay
An old man sits comfortably reclined in a pastoral landscape underneath a tree. His slippers have fallen off his feet and he is completely immersed in the book he is reading. We can only identify him as Saint Jerome by the lion standing behind him on a rocky outcrop, overlooking the landscape and guarding the saint's secluded spot. Rembrandt has omitted the saint's other attributes - the skull and the crucifix - and instead of the usual cardinal's hat has given him a broad-brimmed sunhat. In the background a wooded hillside rises, surmounted by a cluster of buildings. To connoisseurs of Venetian 16th century art, this structure is instantly recognizable and brings to mind the landscapes of Giorgione, Titian and their followers. Rembrandt's towered farmhouse is almost certainly based on the engraving of Shepherds in a Landscape by Giulio and Domenico Campagnola, and it is to this bucolic evocation of the Italian landscape that the print owes it's name. Early commentators regretted the seemingly 'unfinished' state of this print, yet it is precisely this interplay of a merely sketched foreground and a highly detailed background, and of light and darkness, which give the composition rhythm and depth and bring the scene to life. In this print Rembrandt's deliberate and masterful use of blank paper to indicate bright sunshine, and densely worked areas of shadow supplemented with drypoint, is particularly effective.
The present example is printed on a laid paper with an Arms of Amsterdam watermark and countermark PB, a mark and countermark which appears on prints from the late-1650’s (see Bartsch 50, 107, 197, and 203). Although it still shows touches of burr, it no longer has the dense burr that can be found on the earliest impressions (see Christie’s, New York, 29 January 2019, lot 148, sold for $468,500). This has led to the suggestion by Eric Hinterding that the print dealer Clemente de Jonghe (1624-77), who very likely acquired this plate along with a tranche of others sometime after the artist’s bankruptcy in 1655, may have been responsible for these slightly later, but still life-time printings.
`The quality of the later impressions of the St. Jerome is remarkably high...Evidently not many impressions had been made from the plate by the time it came into de Jonghe’s hands.’ (Eric Hinterding, The history of Rembrandt’s copperplates, Waanders Uitgevers, Zwolle, 1995, p. 14).
The copperplate for Saint Jerome reading in an Italianate landscape was last recorded in de Jonghe's estate inventory of 1679, after which it was presumably destroyed and no later printings are known.
The present example is printed on a laid paper with an Arms of Amsterdam watermark and countermark PB, a mark and countermark which appears on prints from the late-1650’s (see Bartsch 50, 107, 197, and 203). Although it still shows touches of burr, it no longer has the dense burr that can be found on the earliest impressions (see Christie’s, New York, 29 January 2019, lot 148, sold for $468,500). This has led to the suggestion by Eric Hinterding that the print dealer Clemente de Jonghe (1624-77), who very likely acquired this plate along with a tranche of others sometime after the artist’s bankruptcy in 1655, may have been responsible for these slightly later, but still life-time printings.
`The quality of the later impressions of the St. Jerome is remarkably high...Evidently not many impressions had been made from the plate by the time it came into de Jonghe’s hands.’ (Eric Hinterding, The history of Rembrandt’s copperplates, Waanders Uitgevers, Zwolle, 1995, p. 14).
The copperplate for Saint Jerome reading in an Italianate landscape was last recorded in de Jonghe's estate inventory of 1679, after which it was presumably destroyed and no later printings are known.