Saint Jerome

Johan Sadeler I (Brussels 1550 - Venice 1600) Saint Jerome Burin Measurements: mm 256 x 210 The Sadeler family were Flemish artists, mainly reproductive engravers, active throughout Europe between the 16th and 17th centuries. The style of the family members is very similar and not always easily distinguishable. For three generations, moving from Holland to Italy, stopping in Germany and Prague, these engravers, publishers, and print dealers played a central role in the dissemination of images. From 1572, Jan/Johan worked in Antwerp, then the world center of printing. He also became a master of the Guild of Saint Luke. With his younger brother Rafael the Elder, he initially moved to Cologne, but the turmoil of the Dutch Revolt forced the artists of Antwerp to move, so the Sadeler family arrived in Italy in 1593, in Venice, where they opened a print shop. Inside a cave, distant from the profile of the castle seen in the background, Saint Jerome is depicted kneeling. Consistent with the iconography, the Saint is an elderly, bearded man, his face marked by wrinkles, contrasting with the plastic and vigorous body covered only by a light loincloth. With his right hand, he holds a crucifix, in his left a stone with which he is flagellating himself. His gaze rests on an open prayer book and beyond the statue of the Virgin with the Child. In the foreground, the lion, the Saint's attribute, a skull, a symbol of the transience of earthly life, and on the left, a statue of a naked woman in pieces, thrown among the brambles. Below the image are engraved four lines in Latin in two columns: Cum sacrum... / ...tua fixa cruce. Further below in the center: G. Monstaert pinxit. Joh. Sadeler Sculpit. Ferdinand Reael excudit. Gillis Mostaert the Elder (Hulst 1528–Antwerp 1598) was a Renaissance painter and draftsman with a thriving workshop in Antwerp, and is today remembered for his landscape subjects, especially nocturnal ones or with fire effects. The record of the copy kept at the British Museum indicates exists a mirror sheet in which Sadeler engraved a Magdalene. Excellent impression trimmed along the copperplate mark, still visible except along the bottom edge. Excellent state of preservation, sheet applied to thick 18th-century paper. Bibliography: Hollstein 370.