Back to full collection
Artist
Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo
Title
Torment of St. Anthony
Date
ca. 1515-20
Culture
Italian
Medium
Oil on panel
Dimensions
69.5 x 119.4 cm (27-3/8 x 47 in.)
Accession Number
1965:002
Credit Line
Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo, Torment of St. Anthony, ca. 1515-20, oil on panel, 69.5 x 119.4 cm (27-3/8 x 47 in.), Putnam Foundation, Timken Museum of Art.
Full view of Torment of St. Anthony
Description
Saint Anthony, a Christian hermit, gave his wealth to the poor when he was a young man. Living in solitude, he devoted himself to prayer but
was tormented by the Devil in the form of demons and evil spirits. Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo shows Saint Anthony with his hands clasped in prayer, fleeing from a dark, hellish vision into a pastoral landscape bathed in warm daylight. Like other northern Italian painters of the time, Savoldo was interested in Flemish painting, which was well known in Venice, particularly Hieronymous Bosch's nightmarish monsters, which influenced his depiction of Saint Anthony's tormentors. As the saint flees, his hands point to a monastery, a reminder that he was the father of monasticism.

Related Information / Media

Provenance

Dr. William Dean, England, his sale, Sotheby’s, London, April 27, 1960, lot 91; Acquired by the Putnam Foundation, 1965

Exhibited

Waltham, Mass., The Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, 1963, Major Masters of the Renaissance, cat. by Creighton Gilbert, pp. 23-24, no. 16, ill.

Literature

Antonio Boschetto, Giovan Gerolamo Savoldo (Milan, 1963), text opposit pls. 16/17, pls. 14-18; Agnes Mongan and Elizabeth Mongan,
European Paintings in the Timken Art Gallery (San Diego, 1969), pp. 32-33. 110-11, no. 8, ill.; Burton Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), pp. 184, 373, 632; Michael A. Jacobsen, "Savoldo and Northern Art," Art Bulletin 56 (December 1974): 530-34; Martin E. Petersen, ''Three Centuries of European Paintings, 1300-1600," Apollo 115 (June 1982): 445, fig. 9; Timken Art Gallery: European and American Works of Art in the Putnam Foundation Collection (San Diego, 1983), pp. 76-77,123-24, no. 29, ill; Pittura del cinquecento a Brescia (Milan, 1986), p. 176, no. 29; Creighton E. Gilbert, The Works of Girolamo Salvoldo: The 1955 Dissertation, with a Review of Research, 1955-1985, Outstanding Dissertations in the Fine Arts (New York, 1986), p. 521, no. .36bis; Giovanni Gerolamo Savoldo, tra Foppa, Giorgione e Caravaggio, exh. cat., Milan, Monasterio di Santa Giulia, and Frankfurt- am-Main, Schirn Kunsthalle (Milan, 1990), pp. 32, 71, 154, ill. p. 30.

Note

This record has been reviewed by Timken Museum of Art staff and may be incomplete or contain errors. Our records are constantly revised. Inquiries about provenance are advised to contact the Director of Curatorial Affairs: curator@timkenmuseum.org.