Landscape with Saint Benedict of Nursia
1634 - 1639.Not on display
This painting entered the Museum`s holdings as Saint Francis in the Brambles by Jan Both. The scene is correctly classified in the catalogue of 1873. A decade later Valdivieso (1973) identifies it as the landscape listed in the Buen Retiro inventory of 1701 and proposes it be attributed to Herman van Swanevelt, albeit with the possible collaboration of Jan Both in the landscape. Luna (1984), Barghahn (1986) and Steland (forthcoming) back the attribution to Van Swanevelt, which is officially adopted by the Museum in the latest general inventory (1990). Until 1972 it features in the Museum`s inventories and catalogues as the companion piece to Landscape with Carthusian (Saint Bruno)? (P2064) and Landscape with Saint Rosalia of Palermo (P2063).
The scene combines two episodes from the life of Saint Benedict of Nursia during the three years he spent in seclusion in the wild, rocky region of Subiaco, east of Rome: when he hurled himself naked into the brambles by the entrance to his cave in order to overcome a powerful temptation sent by the devil; and when the devil broke the bell with which Romanus, the only person who knew the location of the saint`s retreat, would announce his presence to the saint in order to lower him a basket of bread on a rope from the top of the lofty rock overhanging the cave. The cross embedded in the ground before the saint is a reference to Saint Benedict`s great devotion to the Holy Cross, with which he performed numerous miracles. Luna (1984) points out the possibility that the background buildings may allude to the monastery of Monte Cassino which Saint Benedict founded.
The composition is structured into parallel planes of light and shadow that recede into the background. Between a dense, gloomy mass of trees that occupies the left half of the composition and the intensely lit rock face of the right, the space extends towards the mountain that encloses the horizon, which is bathed in dusk light. The pictorial handling of the leaves of the trees and the bramble bush is characteristic of Van Swanevelt. The cleft trunk, a device repeated in practically all of his landscapes, is used here to indicate the precipice which legend has it surrounded the cave. Steland likens the compositional structure and atmospheric effects of this work to the landscapes of the Galleria Doria Pamphilj painted around 1633-34, which Waddingham (1960) rightly attributed to Van Swanevelt, and to the over-door Landscape with Leto and Peasants of Lykia (Berlin, Gemäldegalerie) mentioned in the 1638 inventory of the possessions of Marquis Vicenzo Giustiniani as a possible original by Monsú Erman.
Although as early as the seventeenth century Sandrart praised Van Swanevelt`s skill at painting figures, it has traditionally been accepted that other painters were involved in executing them, as in principle they are not characteristic of his type. TheX-ray image shows that space for the figures was set aside from the outset. In the early Museum catalogues they are attributed to Pieter van Laer (1599-1642/54). Steland is inclined to think that they were executed by Van Swanevelt, as she finds the figure of the saint comparable with the nude in the drawing Woodland Landscape with Nymphs and Satyrs, signed and dated 1634 (or 1636)? in Rome. It is also worth noting in this connection the similarity between the modelling of the saint`s naked body and that of the Christ in Noli me tangere, one of the landscapes by Van Swanevelt in the Galleria Doria Pamphilj (Text drawn from Posada Kubissa, T.: Pintura holandesa en el Museo Nacional del Prado. Catálogo razonado, 2009, pp. 327-328).
