Provenance
Frank Hall Standish [1799-1840], Seville;[1] bequeathed to King Louis Philippe of France [1773-1850]; by descent to his heirs; (sale, _Catalogue des tableaux formant la célèbre collection Standish léguée à S.M. feu le roi Louis Philippe par Mr. Frank Hall Standish_, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 27-28 May 1853, no. 112, as "Légende de Saint Dominique"); to Alphonse Oudry (sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 16-17 April 1869, no. 157, as "Evêque instruisant deux religieuses");[2] (Oudry sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 10 April 1876, no. 60, as "Evêque instruisant deux saintes religieuses"). Maximo Scioletti [d. 1951], Paris; purchased 1951 by (M. Knoedler & Co., New York); owned jointly with (Pinakos [Rudolf Heinemann], New York); sold February 1952 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[3] gift to NGA 1952.
[1] Standish bequeathed his important collection of Spanish pictures and drawings to Louis-Philippe, who added them to the Galerie Espagnole of the Louvre, where they were displayed until 1848.
[2] Because the painting was offered again by the same vendor in 1876, it might have been bought in at the 1869 sale.
[3] M. Knoedler & Co. Records, accession number 2012.M.54, Research Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: Stock book no. 10, p. 64, no. A4706, and Sales book no. 16, p. 383 (copies in NGA curatorial files). The 6 February 1952 invoice from Knoedler's to the Kress Foundation is also in NGA curatorial files. See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/1855.
Accession Number
1952.5.88
Medium
oil on fabric
Dimensions
overall: 245.7 x 173.5 cm (96 3/4 x 68 5/16 in.) | framed: 264.2 x 192.4 x 9.5 cm (104 x 75 3/4 x 3 3/4 in.)
Classification
Painting
Credit Line
Samuel H. Kress Collection
Tags
Painting Baroque (1600–1750) Oil Painting Spanish
Background & Context
Background Story
Francisco de Zurbaran (1598-1664) was a Spanish painter known for the austere, dramatically lit religious paintings that make him the most spiritual painter of the Spanish Golden Age. Saint Jerome with Saint Paula and Saint Eustochium from c. 1640-50 depicts the three saints in the austere, dramatically lit manner that distinguishes Zurbaran's best religious painting. Saint Jerome, the translator of the Bible into Latin, is shown with his followers Saints Paula and Eustochium, who were famous for their pilgrimage to the Holy Land and their devotion to the religious life. The c. 1640-50 date places this in Zurbaran's mature period, when he was producing the starkly lit religious paintings that are his most accomplished works.
Cultural Impact
Saint Jerome with Saint Paula and Saint Eustochium is important in the history of Spanish painting because it demonstrates the austere, dramatically lit religious manner that makes Zurbaran the most spiritual painter of the Spanish Golden Age. The combination of stark lighting and ascetic subject—three saints devoted to the religious life in the stark, dramatically lit composition that Zurbaran perfected—creates a type of religious painting that is uniquely Spanish in its spiritual intensity.
Why It Matters
Saint Jerome with Saint Paula and Saint Eustochium is Zurbaran's Spanish austerity and spiritual drama: three saints rendered in the starkly lit, ascetic manner that makes him the most spiritual painter of the Spanish Golden Age. The c. 1640-50 painting is religious painting at its most intensely Spanish.
