SAVOLDO, Giovanni Girolamo

This is a fine example of Savoldo’s mature work. He painted various versions of the same ever-popular subject, but the Brescia painting is the most concentrated and convincing. It reveals Savoldo’s appealing poetic sentiment which is demonstrated through the simple and direct gestures of the characters, fully expressing their humanity. The light is subtle and the details build up an impressive feeling of realism. Savoldo’s true forte was for night scenes like this, which let him give his liking for unusual light effects full play. Particularly noteworthy is the contrast of the dark background and the brilliantly yet softly illuminated figures in the foreground.

After the angelic message, one shepherd prayerfully approaches the stable while the others peek in through the window, unable to apprehend the direct revelation of the Child. Like other versions of the same theme, this is a figurative representation of Isaiah’s prophecy.

During the first ten years that he worked in Venice, Savoldo developed his own extremely sensitive response to Titian’s use of colour and light. He translated this into sparkling vibrations. But he never lost his mainland sense of realism which is the hallmark of all his work.

Savoldo became a reference point for the young Caravaggio, particularly in his half-length portraits of young men painted in a refined choice of colours and surrounded by strong chiaroscuro effects.

This Crucifixion is a prime example of the artist’s profound interest in Netherlandish and German art. Compositions of the Crucifixion with the crosses set in the middle foreground against a vast panorama seen in a bird’s-eye view ultimately derived from Netherlandish examples known in Italy.

Savoldo produced this powerful study in connection with a signed painting, the Penitent St Jerome (National Gallery, London). The drawing corresponds not only in appearance but also in scale to the head in the painting.

This head and shoulder of a bearded man with his left hand at his chest, with closed eyes and partly parted lips may represent the suffering Christ or a saint shown in a pose of ecstasy or martyrdom. The drawing is attributed to Paris Bordone by some critics.

Savoldo small and homogeneous graphic oeuvre comprises roughly fifteen drawings. Almost all are studies of heads (most drawn from life) in the characteristically Venetian medium of black chalk on blue paper, often heightened with white chalk. Some of them were recognized as preparatory studies.

This compelling drawing is distinguished by its female subject, which is unique in Savoldo’s graphic oeuvre. It is perhaps a study for a grieving or swooning Virgin Mary.

This painting is probably not of the noble French commander Gaston de Foix, killed in the Battle of Ravenna on April 11, 1512, but of the painter Savoldo himself. A strange work of art, the painting reflects the remarkable ability of its creator and is also designed to suggest the general superiority of painting over sculpture: thanks to two mirrors in the background, and the various parts of the armour, the viewer has a view of the knight in the round, and also a complete view of the room and its furniture from every angle.

According to one possible interpretation, the painting is an allegorical portrait of a patrician disguised as a shepherd. The figure is shown holding a recorder and a staff in one hand while gesturing with the other toward a background scene that includes a bagpiper, a flock of sheep, farm buildings, and an imposing, ruined classical building. The simply dressed shepherd wears a wide-brimmed hat that casts a shadow over his eyes, and a flask hangs from his belt.

Savoldo was a Lombard painter who settled in Venice in about 1520. He visited Florence and the monumentality of his painted figures manifests the influence of Michelangelo’s works in Florence. His style can be differentiated from the Venetian style in spite of the seemingly similar compositions. He influenced the late style of Titian and Jacopo Bassano and he played an important role in the formation of Caravaggio’s art.

A good example of his style is St Anthony Abbot and St Paul, in which the light shines from the right and glances off the figures, utterly human in their lifelike concreteness and completely alien to the canons of ideal beauty and perfect harmony obtained in the early sixteenth century.

St Jerome is shown in the desert beating his chest in penitential prayer in front of a crucifix.

Savoldo employed dramatic settings with particular attention to luminous night skies. He acquired a reputation for such work with his paintings for the Mint in Milan. Vasari called his works “nocturnes, with fires, very beautiful”. In the St Matthew and the Angel, a subject appropriate for the Milanese mint insofar as the saint was a tax collector, an angel appears in the darkness to inspire the seated evangelist. Strangely distorting light and shadows play across their drapery and faces, the result of illumination from a small oil lamp placed like a footlight on the table below and in front of them. In the dark recesses at the right two men attend to a seated figure, probably St Matthew in the house of the Queen of Ethopia’s eunuch after he had preached and discredited some local magicians. vFlames and sparks from the fireplace throw the three figures into relief, catching St Matthew’s hands and face with their light, but consigning the rest of his body to near total darkness. At the far left four small figures wander along a moonlit street. Matthew’s peasant’s hands, rumpled clothes, contorted neck, and slightly scruffy beard all contribute to the immediacy of the scene, so convincingly real as to be unsettling.

In Tobias and the Angel, the Brescian artist Giovanni Gerolamo Savoldo depicts the biblical episode in which a heavenly travelling companion tells the young Tobias to catch a fish and use its bile to cure his father’s blindness. Savoldo has here produced a synthesis of his research into the effects of nature on the human figure, on drapery and on foliage, which appears to be pierced by light, and on the quality of colours seen in the distance, by adopting methods taught by Leonardo. A silvery light characterizes his paintings and this distinguishes him from other Venetian painters like Titian, who nonetheless influenced him, as did Lorenzo Lotto.

Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo was influenced by Palma Vecchio and his chief interest was to cultivate the rendition of cloths and silks.